The civilians are coming!

[ninjarabbi]

Received a demand from Command today basically asking us to tell them which posts in our section could be either civilianised, scrapped totally or given to a reservist. Operational commitments, duties such as airfield cover or deployments OOA etc not be counted in the decision. Has anyone else out in Goatland received the same directive? I'm guessing here we go with another short-term money saving fix or the ultimate 'lean' process!

 

[Joe_90]

Lets be honest there isn't a post in the UK that couldn't be civilianised but the point of keeping regulars on is to give us all some sort of turnaround time between dets which makes it a nonsense question. The military costs money and it will always cost as much as you give them, we would all rather have all the civilianised posts back and therefore increase all our det turnaround times and posting choices but this would cost too much so it will never happen, but to actually ask you to make conditions worse for yourself and your lads is ridiculous. There are around 10 thousand personnel in total away at the moment between all 3 Services so that is the cheapest the military can be. Perhaps they could makes us all redundant apart from those in Theatre and only recruit one at a time as someone retires or worse.

Perhaps I have given you your answer? If you do use it and it works well please PM as I want the credit, otherwise you're on your own.DT_Xtremez_14:

 

[smokeyreid]

If their that keen to bring civi posts in, then thats over 200 slots at CMU at Marham and all the OCU's gone then!!!!! theres's over 500 posts!!!

 

[KingGuin]

The same directive has been on our Unit for over a week. With a massive financial deficit it would be downright stupid not to consider every options and - unpalatable or not - this is one.

 

[Teh Wal]

Well at least they're asking at the workface what can be done away with rather than making long range decisions and getting it hopelessly wrong DT_Xtremez_40:

The obvious danger, which has been highlighted before, of taking blue-suited numbers down to a bare minimum is that in a worse case situation it leaves you with no reserve. Lessons learnt through the loss of the lives of many of our predecessors are starting to be forgotten :S

 

[s1mtech]

A rumour going round at the minute, that 50% of groundcrew be replaced with cheaper Waste of space civvies.

it would save a fortune until you pay them the money to be deployed overseas!!

We all know there are bad times ahead, just how bad we will have to wait and see.

 

[The Masked Geek]

You could civilianise the three posts in my pen but you'd have to pay a civy £60k to do it.

They probably will.

 

[Barf vader]

is it cheaper

is it cheaper

I work with some really good civvies mainly becuase most if not all of them are ex-rankers and understand that this job has a flexibility issue that needs to be factored in. I also work with some complete TW*TS who pitch up at 9 clear off at 4.30 and wont do anything outside (or even inside) those hours.

When you factor in the fact that the flexibility is gone, overtime needs to be paid, work to rule becomes more apparent is it really cheaper.

point in case.

had to get a locker down one flight of stairs. 3 civvies talked for 15 mins about how the lift was broken, proper lifting procedures and whether it was in their contract/tor's to even attempt to move this (empty locker)

FFS..... 2 RAF pick the locker up and carry it downstairs (35 secs) where's the cost effectiveness?

when will the bean counters (and lets face it thats where the problems come from) stop treating the forces as a feckin business. We're a force but we're soon becoming a FARCE.

thats it I'm off

DT_Xtremez_25:DT_Xtremez_25:DT_Xtremez_25:DT_Xtremez_25:DT_Xtremez_25:DT_Xtremez_25:

 

[muttywhitedog]

Tell whoever it is that is asking that their job can be civilianised, or downgraded if it is a civvy already.

There's plenty of SO1/2 Paperclips posts at Air Command that could get the shove with very little difference to the capability of our organisation.

Oh, and rename "Forward" & "Depth" back to "Engineering", and get rid of a few more SO1's.

 

[Drill Bit]

Don't forget, we were born civvies and unless we **** out big time, we will die civvies. Clearly the best days of our lives were when we weren't civvies though.

 

[NATOStandard]

You could civilianise the three posts in my pen but you'd have to pay a civy £60k to do it.

They probably will.

If you took into account a service person with health care, uniforms, wages and pensions (all the good stuff on the Armed forces benefits calculator) then the civvy option is going to eventually win out

 

[OldMedic]

I have watched this thread with interest and would query the basic assumption that there are real savings to be made by using civilians instead of servicemen. Yes, some short term monetary gain, but not everything can be costed so simply.

My service days were long ago and I spent the rest of my working life in the NHS both at clinical and then senior management level. I witnessed the run down of support services as all and sundry went out to tender instead of being “in-house” – and without exception standards fell. Then general management rather than professional management came in. Those who could talk the talk got jobs and generally mismanaged because they didn’t understand the nature or the ethos of the organisation and in some case were just incompetent.

Two points; firstly service personnel are by their nature available for duty 24 hours a day if needed, which is cost effective. Secondly, they are highly security conscious and in no way would put their colleagues and the service at risk. Those are not generally the attributes of a civilian, presumably contracted, labour force.

I do hope changes are not made which at some future time of need will prove to have been very costly indeed.

 

[busby1971]

I do hope changes are not made which at some future time of need will prove to have been very costly indeed.

At the end of the day it will come down to cost only, a bum on seat for a set number of hours will always be cheaper if it's a civilian bum.

We all know what will happen productivity/flexibility/capability wise but this is rarely fully considered.

 

[johnny99]

The genuinely sad thing is 20 years ago I believe I was definitely in a professional air force probably second to none in the world..... but since then, ever since options for change we have had to stand by and watch as they've systematically taken away the building blocks of the organization, dismissing any detractors with the usual ' you're just afraid of change'.

The RAF is in rag order today only held together by the professionalism of its personnel, we are being threatened with extinction in the press, serious cuts are coming at a time when we are already close to rock bottom.

In as little as 10 years time we could feasibly be part of the Army..... where are our senior officers, they should be publicly screaming blue murder about the travesty that is taking place.... we are living in a house of cards.

How did we get here ?

 

[Tashy_Man]

In as little as 10 years time we could feasibly be part of the Army..... where are our senior officers

Probably feathering their nests before flying the coop !

Crack on....................DT_Xtremez_09:

 

[ninjarabbi]

Tashy, you're not wrong. They have massive pensions and a virtually guaranteed job with BAE so why should they worry? What really worries me is that we're being asked to look at this without regards as to operational commitments or other responsibilities such as emergency cover. I'm guessing that when they suddenly find they haven't the personnel to go OOA or attend an aircraft crash perhaps then they'll wake up to their utter stupidity. Then again, probably not. I still remember the wholesale slaughter of our fine RAF hospitals in 1996, something the RAF Medical Services have never recovered from.

 

[Climebear]

I wonder how long it will take for people to start looking at trades/branches who don't have a specific role OOA apart from 'Any Trade' posts or jobs that could be filled by anyone:

Air Cartographers? (for whom a detachment away from Northolt must seem like OOA)

Musicians?​

It would be interest to see the pros/cons of changing these to FTRS.

 

[grumpyoldb]

..... where are our senior officers

They haven't got the b@lls to stand up and be counted.

 

[Tashy_Man]

They haven't got the b@lls to stand up and be counted.

To be fair if they did stand up you'd be counting a LONG time seeing as there are so many of them !!

Crack on....................DT_Xtremez_09:

 

[The Masked Geek]

If you took into account a service person with health care, uniforms, wages and pensions (all the good stuff on the Armed forces benefits calculator) then the civvy option is going to eventually win out

A Cpl is cheaper than £60k per capita.