{"id":35087,"date":"2013-04-13T12:00:01","date_gmt":"2013-04-13T16:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=35087"},"modified":"2013-04-13T11:04:22","modified_gmt":"2013-04-13T15:04:22","slug":"dod-were-cutting-our-civilian-workforce-too","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=35087","title":{"rendered":"DoD: We’re Cutting our Civilian Workforce Too"},"content":{"rendered":"

DoD has announced their intent to cut a substantial number of civilian jobs over the next 5 years<\/a> \u2013 between 40,000 and 50,000. \u00a0The planned cuts will amount to between 5 and 6 percent of the DoD civilian workforce.\u00a0 Approximately 12,000 are planned for next fiscal year alone.<\/p>\n

(For those interested, DoD currently has around 1.4 million personnel in uniform full-time.\u00a0 DoD civilian employment at the end of September is projected to be roughly 777,000 \u2013 or just over 1\/3 of DoD\u2019s total full-time direct employees.\u00a0 For comparison, an equivalent cut in uniformed strength over 5 years would be between roughly 70,000 and 84,000.)<\/p>\n

Many of the cuts are supposedly tied to a proposed future Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) action.\u00a0 However, the actual closing of bases won\u2019t begin until 2016 in order to \u201callow the economy more time to recover\u201d.<\/p>\n

Funny – I seem to remember the POTUS telling us for a couple of years now that the economy was \u201cimproving\u201d, but maybe my memory is wrong.\u00a0 And I seem to recall that something else that will happen in 2016, too.<\/p>\n

In any case:\u00a0 further consolidation of military health care facilities was identified as a way to reduce civilian employment.\u00a0 The end of the war in Afghanistan was also identified as a potential source of civilian employment reductions.<\/p>\n

I have to say I\u2019m a bit skeptical on the feasibility of that \u201chealth care facility consolidation\u201d claim.\u00a0 IMO, that might work in some locales where multiple major military installations currently and such consolidation hasn\u2019t already happened.\u00a0 But in many places, military healthcare downsizing\/consolidation has already happened.\u00a0 Many Army installations I\u2019ve been to during the past few years no longer have a full Army hospital<\/em>; instead they have \u201cArmy Health Clinics\u201d or “Army Health Centers”.\u00a0 That\u2019s true today at some good-sized installations like Fort Rucker, Redstone Arsenal, Fort Meade, or Fort Huachuca.\u00a0 So I\u2019m kinda wondering about the mechanics and feasibility of that part of DoD’s plan.<\/p>\n

DoD has indicated that they hope to achieve this reduction through \u201cattrition\u201d.\u00a0 They\u2019re considering offering early retirement incentives and hiring freezes to try to cut end strength without having to let people go involuntarily.<\/p>\n

Something tells me that might just not work as well as expected.\u00a0 Unlike uniformed military, DoD civilian employees haven\u2019t gotten a yearly pay raise since January 2010. \u00a0Their pension (such as it is under the current system \u2013 it ain\u2019t particularly generous any more) is based on their salary during their highest 36 continuous months of employment.\u00a0 This usually ends up being the last 3 years of civilian service \u2013 and sequestration furloughs later this year will screw with that average.\u00a0 I\u2019m guessing quite a number of folks who are retirement eligible will hold out to see if they (1) start getting pay raises again as the economy improves as well as (2) letting their \u201chigh 3 average\u201d recover from sequestration before they start punching out.\u00a0 Many will also want (or need) to work post-retirement, so a poor economy will also be a disincentive to retire immediately.<\/p>\n

Bottom line:\u00a0 it ain\u2019t just the uniformed side of the house that\u2019s feeling the downsizing pinch in DoD.\u00a0 And for those of you in uniform who were planning to retire or separate and move to a civilian job with DoD, it looks like the potential for hiring freezes just raised the bar for getting hired as a government civillian substantially, too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

DoD has announced their intent to cut a substantial number of civilian jobs over the next … DoD: We’re Cutting our Civilian Workforce Too<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":623,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[84],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35087","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-military-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35087","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/623"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=35087"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35087\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=35087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=35087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}