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Who Gets the Gravy While the Navy Gets the Beans?
About 30 years ago, "Pay—
Travel—Adventure,” the catch phrase which dominated every Navy recruiting office from Bremerton to Boston, was the bait, but stability was the hook that pulled ’em in.
What American boy whose family had survived the Depression years could say no to a lifetime of guaranteed benefits?
Recruiters promised reasonably priced commissary foods, base housing, life-long family medical care, well- stocked exchanges, free insurance, no social security, retirement without contributory cost, post-retirement air travel, a secure job, and unlimited correspondence courses and on-campus educational opportunities. Also, there was an attractive package entitled "50% flight pay forever” for those who dared to win their wings.
There also was a fairly settled promotion system which required professional tests for officers and enlisted men, and a reasonable expectation of promotion at a set time. What can a recruiter really promise today? What secure policies exist to attract men to a volunteer Navy that seems to have only tentative plans to provide a probable career with uncertain benefits?
First, if the service secretaries do not soon confront the planners in the Office of Management and Budget and the Defense Comptroller’s Office, commissary savings will not be worthwhile. Prices will rise 15-20% and off- base personnel (who sometimes live far off base because there is so little military housing) will find that shopping is no saving when you have to drive long distances to the base. This, in turn, will "prove” to financial wizards that commissaries are not profitable, and thus ought to be closed completely. For the Navy, this will eliminate a couple of thousand shore billets, thereby allowing men to serve at sea even longer without family life or adequate sea pay.
The unkept promise of excellent medical care is even more galling. The Navy has a great program, but it does not now have enough medical personnel to examine and treat prospective, active, reserve, and retired Navy personnel and also service their families—and it never will! The contributory costs and benefits of CHAMPUS, Blue Cross, or other commercial plans, have already been accepted by some military dependents, and other personnel should be told that their families might look to civilian medical care, starting now!
Exchange benefits also have been downgraded for three decades. Exchanges today are selectively prohibited from carrying many goods, particularly those that are either expensive or used in the home. Once you could furnish a house through exchange services. Now, exchange services often can furnish only alibis. You cannot purchase major appliances, furniture, or even name-brand items. The Special Order sections of exchanges contain company catalogs wherein items over a certain price (usually $75) are boldly stamped "excluded” for military purchase.
Of course, free insurance has been removed for many years and though inexpensive term insurance is available up to $20,000, no military man with any sense would consider this to be adequate coverage today. Careful analysis of civilian decreasing term insurance and group policies issued by organizations closely affiliated with the military are needed to supplement the coverage you "purchase” from the government.
Since the invasion of Social Security into the military career pattern (which, theretofore, had been presumed to be socially secure), personnel are not only required to contribute, but it is anticipated that a retiree’s actual social security benefits—which he or she earned—will be computed on a base that will reduce retirement income proportionally. Try that one on civilian industry and see how fast labor pains will develop.
Plans also are being discussed which will require future military personnel to either contribute part of their pay to their own retirement program, or reduce the percentage of retirement pay for those leaving the service with less than 30 years of service.
If both programs were adopted, retirement benefits could be much less than those of civilian government workers and corporation executive plans. Most importantly, the military often will not allow you to work for 30 years to obtain the maximum benefits. This category of the mainly maligned includes passed over officers and, for those not passed over, the ever threatening reselection or continuation boards and Navy-sponsored hump legislation. Expressed succinctly, the Navy is saying: "You could get maximum retirement pay if you served 30 years, but we’re not going to let you serve 30 years.”
Once again post-retirement air travel also is under scrutiny. Retired families who have waited at bases for space available flights can testify to the disappointment, delay, distress, and detours which would deter any family from planning to use this benefit.
Recently, U. S. Armed Forces Institute Project Transition, Associate Degree Completion Program, Navy Enlisted Scientific Education Program, and some postgraduate education programs have been curtailed. Additionally, money to support off-duty education
is scarce. This means that you can become educated on your free time with your own money. Who can’t?
Job security, as previously mentioned, usually is guaranteed for 20 years, difficult for 30, and mostly impossible beyond. The guideline for over 30 years of service is "either become an admiral or get out.” This is doubly disheartening to those who enjoy their naval careers because:
(1) it is wasteful to release qualified, productive personnel, and (2) there are few openings for admirals.
Aviation pay is ridiculously low, particularly since it is "hazardous duty” compensation. Civilian pilots, both private and airline, expect to receive at least $25-$50 an hour just for flying, and airline captains receive about $75 an hour. Additionally, as our departing aviators have noticed, flight pay is subject to the "gates” of chance. And although few Navy captains fly, when they do they receive about the same amount of flight pay as a World War II lieutenant.
Finally, the Navy promotion system, once a model of efficiency because of its stability and professional examination base, has become suspect. The officer tests (or substitute correspondence courses) have long been abandoned and below zone selections are rampant. Meanwhile, enlisted advancements have been jammed, tests compromised, and ratings sometimes combined, newly instituted, or deleted without adequate fleet analysis. How any officer selections, particularly deep selections, are made without assuring a line officer is technically qualified in all areas such as ordnance, engineering, personnel administration, supply, navigation, Navy Regulations, UCMJ, etc., is beyond the comprehension of any but the Divine.
This perceived inequity, coupled with fluctuating time periods for advancement, leaves both officer and enlisted personnel insecure. It would be much fairer to require exams and to set minimum service periods for eligibility such as: eight years to POl; 12 years to CPO; 16 years to SCPO; 20 years to MCPO. For officers, it should be five years to LT; ten years to LCDR; 16 years to CDR; 22 years to CAPT; 28 years to RADM. A small (perhaps five) percentage of below zone selections also should be allowed, but not required. This system would prevent the spastic annual personnel meeting where planners manipulate slide rules with inaccurate frenzy.
Today’s Navy leaders, then, should disavow past programs and projects which are only going to be subject to increasing criticism and personnel chaos in the next quarter century. What’s needed is a broad-based plan which will institute a new and stable Navy benefit program with survival possibilities within the next decade.
Specifically, the Navy should cease its support of (1) commissaries,
(2) exchanges, (3) family medical care, (4) post-retirement travel, (5) off- duty education, (6) 15% deep selection and (7) flight gates.
The Navy should initiate proposals to (1) raise pay of all personnel equally (plus a cost-of-living clause) to compensate for these losses, (2) provide an expanded CHAMPUS Program for Navy families, (3) increase active- duty term insurance to $100,000 on an optional basis at $10,000 increments, (4) guarantee only active and retired personnel lifelong military hospital services, (5) retain non-contributory retirement at present percentage levels (plus a retired and Fleet Reserve cost-of-living clause), (6) abandon support of any social security offset plan, (7) pursue fervently a reasonable sea pay program for officer and enlisted personnel, (8) allow a planned percentage (5%?) of top performing individuals to remain on active duty for 30 years despite non-promotion,
(9) pay flight pay of at least $20 per hour to all who fly operationally, regardless of rate, rank, or crew position, (10) institute a testing system
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for officer promotions, and (11) set minimum eligibility periods for all advancements.
These proposals require an impetus which can only be generated by the Department of the Navy’s leaders as a long-range position statement. However, if the Navy is ever to bear the burden of defending current programs and activities only to lose them anyway, it would be better to initiate dynamic alternatives than to have decisions thrust upon them. Perhaps recruiters, once more, could then achieve success as honest brokers in American society.
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