Manning Gaps?
 

I've just seen this incredible advert on the Reserves website. Basically, as I read it we are employing ex SACs to Wg Cdrs on up to 90 days per year to fill manning gaps? Seems they will be known as 'Base Support Group':

Volunteer Ex Regular Reserve (VeRR) Vacancies - Base Support Groups - SAC thru Wg Cdr - Various Units - See Advert - FTRS-PTVR-ADC-VeRR

But only at RAFs Boulmer, Cranwell, Honington or Lossiemouth - are no other stations eligible?

The B Word

So for your 90 days per year, you'd like to hand out keys, man the gate or perhaps do the copying or make the tea for the 'professionals'..I don't think so.
(my mistake, tea bars aren't allowed now!)

Even today, an ex-Lossie guy was telling me and a CAA guy that the RAF was so sure that rumours of a better life outside was untrue that they sent a Groupie to check it out. When the Groupie came back he said the rumours were indeed true and that he'd been offered a job too...The guy didn't say if the Groupie took the job or not.

If you left more that 5 years ago then, if you went back, you'd get shock from shortages and conditions.

4 months work, 14 days leave? Nice little earner if fed up with gardening?

Ideal for cold winter months :)

I enquired about FTRS at a northern recruiting office......the Corporal took my details but appeared to be totally disinterested......unlike the army guy. Never heard anything. My daughter was greeted with the same indifference......she wanted to join as an already qualified doctor!
Ah well......non taken!

Whilst seemingly a logical move to take advantage of an available resource, this is actually a damning indictment of the state of manning in the Service. Local Service Airmen (and women) were around way back when I joined the RAF, so the basic principle is not new. The idea is based on people leaving the Service because they want to stay in a particular area (perhaps they have married locally for example), but who still have specialist skills for which the station is in need - I am sure you can think of people in this position? However, the fact that it has come to this is exposes the inadequacy of the offer against the demands of Service Life.

What we are currently seeing is a situation where there are gaps at almost all officer levels up to and including wg cdr. In order to keep a post in existence which Manning is 'unable' to fill, the relevant department has to demonstrate the ongoing need for it, either by buying-in contractor support (and you can imagine what that costs) or creating a temporary Full Commitment FTRS post for, say, 3 years, hoping that the post wins the lottery and can be filled when the 3-years is up. What is deeply unfair is that such posts may be given to people of a lower rank on the basis of a job application rather than as the result of a prom board. So, the chap or chapess who just missed the cut-off for promotion to sqn ldr may be overtaken by someone far lower in the pecking order but who is prepared to leave (or may have left) the Regular RAF for FTRS (FC), under similar terms.

We tend to think of the inability to recruit as impacting at the lower levels only, but in practice, 'Manning' limits promotions at several levels in order to maintain some form of hierarchy. People who, in years gone by, would have moved onwards and upwards are kept where they are because we still need people at that level.

I'd love to see the stats that prove it isn't true!

What has happened to tea bars then?

These sorts of schemes are rolled out to huge fanfares, touted no doubt as indicators or innovative thinking, a determination to sort manning levels out and various other media-friendly measures. It's just a shame that we don't put quite as much effort in to implementing the simpler, and arguably potentially more successful, schemes of funding the personnel side of the Defence budget appropriately to enable sufficient recruiting, along with stopping the incessant buggering people around so much they want to leave.

Or am I being overly simplistic?

W00, When ISS took over Catering (and, i believe, from NAAFI too) All Sqn/Section tea swindles on camps were hounded out of action...to enhance the use of commercial facilities (aka to enforce a purchasing monopoly) to ISS on all bases.
Naturally prices rose accordingly.

At best I see the 90 days as a convenient between jobs earner. Or as a pocket money job to retirement. Perfect for WIW but do you really expect then to even go the mile?

Melchett - I wouldn't use the term 'innovative'; I suggested such a measure as an option to falling manning levels and experience loss when I did my dissertation in 2010, and always considered it common sense rather than some innovative nirvana.

Rigga - progress then - NOT. I remember inspecting accounts of tea bars at St Athan that were individually VAT registered they were so large

I bet tea swindles still exist as well, principally as they provide an as required service probably over longer hours than Sqn coffee bars with 'fixed' break times.

Hmmm ... no appointments in my former Rank/Branch at those locations, so I won't be applying.

Probably an inconvenient commute for an older person anyway :)

No they weren't.

"As these positions are ‘rank’ ranged, personnel must either have been, or currently be an SAC thru to Wg Cdr and have served in the Regular or Reserve Air Forces."

:ugh::=

They did at Marham, they had all the hobs in the kitchens disconnected and George Formans were banned too!!

They're trying to be cool, innit?

MPN11, I bet there would be another small problem - your uniform?

Hmmm .. close, but not close enough as far as No. 1 and No. 5 goes.

Cruel but fairly accurate. :)

What's the age limit? :p