I thought so as well, but that's not entirely true. Let me see if I can remember what Mike (my brother-in-law) told me.
Contractors do not require much training since one of the requirements for their job is to have experience in it. Also, contractors are not paid benefits from the Army, the company that they work for provides the benefits. Soldiers require lots of training just to become soldiers, then more training to learn their job. Plus we have to house, feed and clothe the soldiers as well. That costs a lot of money. Then soldiers have to have benefits (medical, dental, vision). Then there is the issue of retaining soldiers. To retain a soldier, we have to send them so more schools. If you are enlisted, you have to complete on-line courses called Structured Self Development. There are five levels that have to be done over your career and depending on what rank you make. As a Staff Sergeant, I have had to do levels one and three, level two was done in an NCO academy. When you become an NCO, you have to go through different levels of schools as well as you move up in the ranks. With contractors, you do not need to worry about any of this. If more training is required for the contractor to move up, it's the responsibility of the company that employs the contractor to provide that training, or the contractor has to pay for their own training. If times are hard, then you can and will let the contractors go. For instance, all of the civilians that work with our ranges here at Benning are all contractors. There are some DOD full time employees, but they are management types. So come April if no budget is in effect, then these contractors are going to go away. That's not an issue really since my battalion runs all the ranges here on post anyway. The civilians do maintenance and fetch us supplies when we need them. Some ranges, such as mine do not need their help for maintenance since I do not have automatic target lifters on my range. It's a Known Distance range. We use those old school target lifters that are powered by privates. The only thing I do for maintenance is repair the wooden target frames, or the wooden lifters. The automated ranges though require training that we as soldiers do not have. We could be taught but it's better to keep a few of these civilians because they have a lot more experience on them. And then there are the lifters for tanks and Bradley's. These are huge and we have no clue about them. All we know how to do is operate them with the computers in the towers. Now in the dining facilities, yes, we can get rid of the civilians. The Army has tons of cooks and we have tons of privates to wash dishes. I remember when I was in basic training, all the cooks were Army and we all rotated through the kitchen to wash dishes,. Usually twice during the 10 week basic training cycle. Other contractors are the people that work for housing. You have leasing managers and maintenance people that the Army does not have. So we need them as well. Otherwise you have to create new jobs for soldiers, and then train and retain them. Now, let;s talk about the contractors down range. These guys are getting paid a shit ton of money to do what soldiers can do. But, since the Army wants maximum boots on the ground to fight, cooks and mechanics and the like are going out on patrols with the infantry and armor guys, and civilians are working on trucks and doing the cooking. Civilians outnumber service-members on some of the larger LSA's (Tim can testify to this I am sure). I am sure that many of them can go away as well if we had more soldiers in the combat arms jobs, but since the Army has been cutting back on numbers, this will never happen. My step-father is a mechanic that works for certain people and makes around 80K a year tax free while he is overseas. When home on vacation, he only gets his $30.00ish an hour and pays taxes on that month of pay. The Army has mechanics that can do his job. Again though, since they want as many people out the wire as they can get, the civilians are there to stay because the Army won't increase the number of soldiers it has. The Army wants to cut around 80K worth of soldiers over the next few years in fact. So I guess the answer is that some contractors can go away while most have to stay because it's still more cost effective to keep them. I am going to email my brother in law for a more in depth explanation. He is currently in Afghanistan so it might be a day or two before I get a reply. Bruce On Feb 28, 2013, at 7:37 PM, "Eric Roberts" <ow...@threeravensconsulting.com> wrote: > > What they should be doing is cutting contractors period and putting soldiers > in their place. Hiring contractors to do the jobs costs us 10 times as much > as it would cost us to have soldiers do the job. > > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Order the Adobe Coldfusion Anthology now! http://www.amazon.com/Adobe-Coldfusion-Anthology/dp/1430272155/?tag=houseoffusion Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/message.cfm/messageid:361684 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/unsubscribe.cfm
