PUS under Fire

[Red Line Entry]

Following the announcement on the Andrew Marr show on Sunday that more civil servant posts are under threat in the MOD, Jon Thompson's blog has had quite a vitriolic response - well over 100 comments in 2 days, none of which are favourable!

I do think we have allowed the CS to become unfairly demonised in the public's eyes. I currently work with a bunch of talented CS who both go 'above and beyond' and have a good military respect for friendly banter.

Yes, there are some wasters, but that applies to some of those in uniform too!

http://pppaintranet.chris.r.mil.uk/blogs/pus/2013/06/24/24-june-2013/

[5 Forward 6 Back]

They'd get a little more sympathy and respect from me if the first dozen or so posts on that blog weren't about removing CEA and flying pay from aircrew not in active flying roles. A complete lack of understanding of what both are meant to cover!

Some of the attitudes on display are terrible. "Your choice to join the service and your choice to combine that with having children, why should the taxpayer fund private education?" A bit like the ever-popular "if you don't like it, leave" stuff.

By all means fight your cuts and idiocy from above, but if your first response is to snipe at allowances that other people get, you'll find your bucket of sympathy empties rather quickly.

[30mRad]

Here, here, 5F6B. I got bored with the comments after the first handful. And it is this group of people who will be the first to defend their own benefits - the redeployment pool for example. :mad:

[Helol]

That's nowt. Read the comments to his previous two blogs!

[Jimlad1]

In the context that one group of people (civilians) just got told they were being financially shafted on pay and allowances (pay freeze for years, no incremental progression, allowances reduced) then i can understand the anger when they find out that thousands will be made redundant and seemingly no personnel cuts or allowance cuts or pay freezes will be made to the military who got a (albeit small) payrise this year and continue to get spine point progression, something not seen in mod cs for several years.
It is hardly 'we're all in this together' now is it?

[Jumping_Jack]

If you don't like it JimLad you could always leave....:E

[lj101]

Jimlad

'Its hardly we are all in this together'

"We have vehicles in theatre now that have better protection than Snatch, but of course they are not all arriving at once.
"Our task is to make sure that they have vehicles of that size and manoeuvrability with as much protection as can practically be put on."
His comments came the same day that it emerged that British civil servants are only allowed to use armoured Toyota Land Cruisers in war zones.


Agreed.

[Pontius Navigator]

The whole angst between CS-Mil is probably the lack of information about the other's ToS.

CS work a limited number of conditioned hours in a week and although eligible for overtime usually have to take time off in lieu.

CS get bonuses - no they don't. 10% of their pay pot is withheld and doled out to the lucky ones.

CS have some benefits that Mil don't have and visa versa.

That Mil can be required to work many more hours with no time off in lieu. Get regular pay rises (maybe) and have other benefits that CS don't have.

The sticking point is when you have a CS administering Mil and the other way around, especially when it comes to annual reporting.

[lj101]

PN

You forgot this;

Public and Commercial Services Union (http://www.pcs.org.uk/)

The Protocols are an agreement between the Cabinet Office and the Council of Civil Service Unions (since replaced by the NTUC), which was endorsed by Permanent Secretaries, the Cabinet Secretary and the Cabinet Office Minister. This major agreement resulted from negotiations following PCS industrial action and campaigning to protect public services and our members.

The aim of the agreement is to avoid compulsory redundancies for those who want to continue their civil service (or NDPB) careers. It aims to provide a consistent approach across the civil service and NDPBs in dealing with surplus staff situations. It applies to all employees whether or not they are trade union members.

Our lads and lasses that were made compulsory redundant would be thrilled to find out the 'pain' was avoided by some public sector workers..... and some CS that were made redundant, got their pay offs, waited the required amount of time, re applied to join the CS, are back in their jobs. Nice.

[Pontius Navigator]

Lj, true, but I also know aircrew, retired at an option point, spent the pot of gold, rejoined as children approached secondary school age, got BSA.

Or one even, through some leger de main, if I got it right from a fellow ppruner, got the time out credited to his ultimate pension pot.

Yes, the unions are a powerful force for 'good'. My much smaller one was on the coat tails but still able to stand up for its members. There is an awful lot to be said for a representative outside the management chain.

[Jimlad1]

Its worth noting that the reason the MOD has not yet had to resort to compulsory civilian cuts is because they were able to get sufficient volunteers in Tranche 1 to cover all the cuts required for the next 4 years.They needed to make roughly 17,000 redundant as part of a 32,000 overall downsizing and still got more applicants than places in the first tranche.

[GOLF_BRAVO_ZULU]

There were many reasons why so many wanted "out" at the first invitation.

Amongst those was to get their Pension "pay" and lump sum safely on stream before some bright young things started sodding about with the rules.

Additionally, many were increasingly poxed off with chasing ever more and ever deeper savings targets to the detriment of the prime objective; capability.

On top of that, there was the gradual creep of work being provided that was beneath the Grade of the worker. This included CS C2s being given work previously done by Ds and that now rare appointment, E1/E2. Even now we have engineers doing admin jobs because their previous technical jobs have been magically contractorised.

It also gripped some C1/C2s when their job title suddenly dropped an SO notch. I remember well a very able C1 who applied and was selected for a job that was, in the event, titled SO2 and her boss was a quite junior Commander RN. The big danger here, though, is falling into the trap of military and civilian being at loggerheads with each other. Divide and conquer is alive and well, living in Whitehall.

[SRENNAPS]

5 Forward 6 Back

removing CEA and flying pay from aircrew not in active flying roles. A complete lack of understanding of what both are meant to cover!

I am not being cynical or am I trying to stir up something that I know has been discussed on this forum many times.
However, I must admit that I have never really understood what both are meant to cover, as you put it!

And just my two pence on the Civil Service:

I have a wife who works for the MOD on a cr@p wage, who even after 17+ years will end up with a cr@p pension. She and just about all of her work mates have been pushed and pulled from pillar to post; threat of redundancy, threat of TUPE, threat of this change, threat of that change, etc, etc, etc.

Yet she still spends approximately 30% of her salary and nearly 4 hours of her day travelling by unbelievably cramped and unreliable, dirty, minging trains to get to work each day. Why? because she loves her job and is proud of what she does to (hopefully) help those members of the Armed Forces to operate safely and efficiently all over the world.
It is just a shame that she has her hands tied and is blindfolded by muppets! (That is my opinion, not hers :E)

[romeo bravo]

So Geoffrey (sorry George) Osbourn talks about not affecting the military but reducing the size of the MOD CS. So, with a reducing size of the military across the board and now a even smaller CS component, who is going to take on the workload of the CS component???

For example, if you look at the DE&S area, jobs are done by CS and military, CS reduce and military go back to front line, job doesn't get done, affecting frontline troops.

On station, jobs undertaken by CS now done by military; OCs start saying my guy (or girl) is employed to 'x', so whyare they doing 'y'.

Yes, there is a group within the CS who, dare I say it, are a waste of space, there to collect their pay packet; but many people are there for the right reasons, that is to be a key member of the MOD and support the troops of any the Armed Forces.

[lj101]

Jimlad

Interesting; so why in their job vacancy website do they do this if it's not required?

Stage 2 - Exclusive 10 day period for surplus staff in all departments at their current grade

I can log on to your recruitment website as a CS (as all military people can do with a login, if they request one).

Stage 1 - Internal, level moves

Stage 2 - Exclusive 10 day period for surplus staff in all departments at their current grade

Stage 3 - Vacancies advertised to all staff, regardless of grade or department within a region

Stage 4 - External recruitment

Romeo Bravo

If you get a chance look up Parkinson's law. The realities of human behaviour within a bureaucracy 'work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion'

In other words, I think it will be just fine.

[Jimlad1]

The Stage 2 only applies to the small number of staff who are in essentially holdover jobs - e.g. their post was lifed or has been scrapped but they are staying in. Anyone coming back from an Operational Tour will usually find themselves in this spot too. This gives them a small window to apply for posts, but after a finite time they too face being booted out.
No different to the military where sometimes people find themselves out of a posting for a short time.
Its nothing to do with the redundancy process, which has seen tens of thousands of MOD CS laid off in the last 3 years.

[Justanopinion]

dealing with surplus staff situations

Jimlad, the point is that the military do not have a 10 day window to apply for another job in the military when they find they are in "surplus staff situations" (made redundant)

[Jimlad1]

Okay – let me explain again because clearly it’s a very difficult concept to understand.

The ‘surplus staff’ situation is not the same as staff being made redundant. It is the same as military personnel being put on holdover between postings due to their current post being scrapped or changed. This happens because the civilian side doesn’t have career managers to post staff to and they need to find their own jobs.

How many times do I have to explain that this is nothing to do with making staff redundant?

There have been no compulsory redundancies due to so many staff volunteering to be made redundant.

[SamYeager]

@romeo bravo
So Geoffrey (sorry George) Osbourn talks about not affecting the military but reducing the size of the MOD CS. So, with a reducing size of the military across the board and now a even smaller CS component, who is going to take on the workload of the CS component???

For example, if you look at the DE&S area, jobs are done by CS and military, CS reduce and military go back to front line, job doesn't get done, affecting frontline troops.

Ah but you're overlooking that saviour of DE&S known as GOCO. :E

@Justanopinion - As mentioned above:
The whole angst between CS-Mil is probably the lack of information about the other's ToS.

[lj101]

Jim

Thanks for your reply.



65. The Permanent Under Secretary's argument, that civilians are flexibly employable whereas the military are not, runs contrary to our experience of the breadth of the military training we have witnessed on operations. The MoD, in its response to this Report, should set out what opportunities and encouragement it gives to those in the Armed Forces who face compulsory redundancy to retrain, especially into pinch point trades. The PUS's argument also implies a lack of strategic vision as to the direction to be taken by the civilian component of the MoD.

66. On the other hand the Minister's assertion, that many civil servants but insufficient members of the Armed Forces have applied for redundancy, ignores the question of why that should be so. The MoD should consider whether the terms of redundancy offered to either the military or civilian staff are fair or appropriate in the light of the stark and shocking difference between the application of compulsion in redundancy to the two branches of service in the MoD. For military redundancies to be compulsory in 40 per cent of cases, yet for civilian redundancies to be compulsory in none, is so grotesque that it requires an exceptionally persuasive reason. We are not persuaded by either of the two reasons we have been given.

Got it.

[5 Forward 6 Back]

SRENNAPS,

I am not being cynical or am I trying to stir up something that I know has been discussed on this forum many times.
However, I must admit that I have never really understood what both are meant to cover, as you put it!

It's always been very simple to me, and sorry to derail! There are CS on that blog saying pilots who "aren't even flying and are sat behind a desk!" shouldn't get flying pay. It's not "danger money" for actively flying, it's retention pay for skills and experience, which are still required in certain ground jobs.

CEA makes sense for those like me who've done a tour in middle England, one in the south, one in the north of Scotland, and one overseas. I'm very definitely mobile and it's not fair to put my kids into a state school ready for GCSEs only to be told "hey 5F6B, next tour, back overseas/back to the north of Scotland!" Not designed to provide service kids with a private education, rather designed to make sure their education has continuity when it's required.

I would expect NEM with its geographic stability/longer tours to do away with it for a LOT of people.

But rather than getting into the nitty gritty of specific allowances, it's the attitude that stinks. Military aircrew should have to accept a 20% pay cut if posted to a non-flying job that requires aircrew because CS haven't understood why they're paid FP and are angry at their TOS? Or military officers shouldn't have kids because it's a choice? The military wouldn't work very well if everyone left when they started a family!

I can't believe people display that sort of attitude and then expect sympathy with their admittedly very poor situation. It's alright to ruin the education of hundreds of service children just because they want a pay rise?

[Jimlad1]

“The Permanent Under Secretary's argument, that civilians are flexibly employable whereas the military are not,”

Possibly the most misquoted out of context statement that I have seen by the HCDC. What the PUS was trying to say was actually something very different. Namely that in the civil service there is no branch structure with career path – unlike the military who once in branch will generally follow a tightly defined career plot and where desks man the requirement (e.g. find X number of Flt Lts qualifed to do widget making to later on provide Y number of Sqn Ldrs to oversee widget making). What the PUS was trying to explain was that once branched, it is difficult to then do a swap into another branch later in the career – the military career path is quite locked in – so were you a Wg Cdr RAF REGT, then if your post was deleted, it is hard to suddenly cross transfer and become Wg Cdr Typhoon Pilot without a lot of retraining.

What this means is that the military excels at a career stream of producing excellent specialists, but it is very much stovepiped and opportunities to cross branch are limited – partly due to the length of time required to retrain, but also because you need to maintain a career plot for juniors.

By contrast the MOD CS staff do not have any form of career management and the roles they undertake rarely need much job specific training. While there are certain areas where one needs experience (e.g. nuclear), a lot of the posts draw on more generic skills that can be acquired across a range of areas. This means that when civilians are more flexible in the sense that they can swap commands / locations / departments to fulfil a job in a different area in a way that service personnel cannot do as easily.

The problem was that this very sensible point – namely that two different organisations which use very different methods to train and employ staff which both work for the organisations, but has implications on staff employment, was mistaken to be seen that somehow PUS thought CS were better than the military.

“The MoD, in its response to this Report, should set out what opportunities and encouragement it gives to those in the Armed Forces who face compulsory redundancy to retrain, especially into pinch point trades”
The retraining argument only makes sense if you can get staff with sufficient return of service to be able to do the training and still provide value to the corps / trade group / branch. For instance, if SSGT Blogs was a experienced signaller, but had 5 years left to do, does it make sense to send him on a (hypothethical) 2 year long training cycle to do something in a totally new Corps / Cap badge where he has no prior experience or knowledge in return for 3 years service? Why not promote from within the manpower plot, in order to keep the career structure flowing?

Transferring makes sense where there is sufficient time left to provide value, but when people are close to leaving anyway, why not just recruit new personnel and get an entire career out of them, rather than investing scarce resources on someone who will be leaving soon afterwards anyway?

“that many civil servants but insufficient members of the Armed Forces have applied for redundancy, ignores the question of why that should be so”

Because speaking to people I know who applied, the sense was that the MOD CS has been a morale vacuum for years, with people feeling unvalued, fed up of pay freezes, lack of promotion opportunities and career prospects and seeing their T&COS being further eroded. Additionally many of those who went were older, and saw that they could get their pension and a pay off for leaving, rather than spend several more depressing years getting more frustrated. I don’t blame them for leaving in the slightest.
By contrast the regular military offers a good well paying job with a clear career structure, reasonable prospects and a very attractive package of benefits compared to most civvy jobs. Friends of mine who looked at jumping quickly realised that they would struggle to replicate the package they were on in civvy street.
Its about two very different organisations having very different sets of staff challenges.

“For military redundancies to be compulsory in 40 per cent of cases, yet for civilian redundancies to be compulsory in none, is so grotesque that it requires an exceptionally persuasive reason. “
Not really – if you annoy one workforce enough that it gets all the applicants it needs to leave over 5 years in the first year then you should ask more why it is that so many wanted to leave. Clearly HM Forces got it right and few wanted to go. Frankly I’d be more worried if the Military had met its target for redundancies by volunteers alone as it would imply a very serious morale problem in the system.

[Party Animal]

Jimlad,

You explained yourself very well (as is often the case) however,

Clearly HM Forces got it right and few wanted to go. Frankly I’d be more worried if the Military had met its target for redundancies by volunteers alone as it would imply a very serious morale problem in the system.

Not quite right. For the various tranches of redundancies back in the 90's and 00's, I think almost all of the Armed Forces personnel were volunteers. In this latest batch, redundancies were decided on virtually a reverse promotion board. Many volunteers were not selected and many were made compulsory redundant despite being the same age, rank, trade, experience etc.. as those who volunteered. That's the big difference between us and the CS this time round.

[SRENNAPS]

5 Forward 6 Back

Many thanks for your reply. I also do not wish to derail this thread but I thought a reply to you would be at least the polite thing to do.

I personally have never had a problem with Flying Pay; flying or not flying! (With respect to most Ground Crew, I am probably in the minority on this :)). In my opinion all aircrew have worked extremely hard to earn their wings and they are an extremely specialised skill set who, just because they serve a tour behind a desk, should not be penalised with the loss of a hard earned extra.

As for the CS on that blog, they are just very angry people who will say anything because they are potentially seeing their whole way of life changing, not just one allowance.

With respect to CEA, sorry but I am just a little bit more cynical on this one. CEA is a personal choice; it is right for some, but not right for others. I did 13 tours in 29 years and we elected not to board our daughters. As it was my eldest did board at JHQ for 12 months (to finish her O levels) when I was posted from Bruggen to Odiham and then back to Bruggen within 11 months. (Ah yes, the RAF did not mess me around too much there :{:{). In the end both of my daughters turned out great and they are in very successful professional careers. As I said, CEA can be right for some, but no for others.

I do not have any issues with parents that have use CEA to board when they have their children’s best interests in mind.

However, sadly in my opinion, the CEA system was used and abused by many, not for the good of their children, but for the good of themselves. As a generalisation they were the pompas arrogant types that would suck up to anything above but look down in contempt at anything below them. And as for loyalty to their Sqn and RAF as a whole, just don’t get me started.

In recent discussions with another person on this subject the following words were put to me:

Corporals sending children so they can say their children went to boarding school (from the age of 5!). Officers so that they can enjoy the social life. There are parents living not 5 miles from the school.

Yes, in my experience I can relate to the above and have seen so many instances of that type of abuse across all ranks. I would also go as far to say that I have met couples who did not want the hassle or pressure of bringing up their kids, especially when one is away on 4 month OOA tours on regular occasions. Their attitude was to take advantageof the system to make their lives easier! A cynical view I know, but true in my opinion.

On a final note, my daughters are now aged 30 and 26. We have spoken many times on the family decisions made not to board them during those years of moving around every three years. I have asked them if they ever regretted it. The answer is always a resounding NO. They enjoyed the adventure of moving around to new places and meeting new people. Dam! They even tell me that “Bruggen Scaly Brats” have their own Facebook page where they meet up and chat about their school days.
I personally think my daughters are better people because of the moving around with the RAF. But everybody is different and there is no right or wrong way of doing it. Unless through selfishness you abuse the system of course :E:E

And now back on thread:

Jimlad1

“For military redundancies to be compulsory in 40 per cent of cases, yet for civilian redundancies to be compulsory in none, is so grotesque that it requires an exceptionally persuasive reason. “
Not really – if you annoy one workforce enough that it gets all the applicants it needs to leave over 5 years in the first year then you should ask more why it is that so many wanted to leave. Clearly HM Forces got it right and few wanted to go. Frankly I’d be more worried if the Military had met its target for redundancies by volunteers alone as it would imply a very serious morale problem in the system.

My thoughts exactly. Nail hit firmly on the head :D