PDA

View Full Version : Pay review to consider dramatic compensation changes



thedrifter
03-17-06, 07:47 AM
March 16, 2006
Pay review to consider dramatic compensation changes

By Gordon Lubold
Times staff writer

The Pentagon will shortly begin a wide-ranging pay-and-benefits review that could lead to dramatic changes to the way military personnel are compensated.

The 10th Quadrennial Review of Military Compensation will begin its work April 1 under the leadership of a retired one-star general.

The review will take many of its cues from a compensation advisory group that recently submitted preliminary recommendations that include a complete revision of the current retirement system, as well as myriad other proposals, including overhauling the dizzying array of special and incentive pays and raising housing allowances for single members to match what married troops receive.

That group proposed eliminating the “20-years-or-nothing” retirement system in which service members who make it to 20 years of service can retire with 50 percent of their base pay.

The group proposed partial retirement vesting as early as 10 years of service, for example, but without allowing actual payments to begin until troops reach age 60.

The QRMC will take all those ideas and more into account. It will be led by Jan Eakle, a retired Air Force brigadier general whose last active-duty job was with the Defense Finance and Accounting Service. She will report to David S.C. Chu, undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness.

Previous QRMCs have had varying levels of influence on military pay and benefits. Some have made radical proposals that were never acted upon. The 9th QRMC, however, played a large role in a multiyear series of robust targeted pay raises for midgrade and senior enlisted members and warrant officers — to reflect their increasing education and responsibility levels compared to their civilian peers.

Some believe this latest review, which will not be completed until late in Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s tenure, in the second-term Bush administration, may not have that kind of impact. But others aren’t so sure.

“It’s the first time, really, in a decade that they’ve had really bold ideas going into the QRMC,” said Cindy Williams, principal research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s security studies program, who has studied military compensation in recent years.

“They are bold ideas, but the time has come for bold ideas,” Williams said. “We are spending way too much money right now on pay and benefits that aren’t giving the military what it wants in terms of its personnel goals.”

Ellie