Hagel: Furloughs May Continue Next Year For DoD Employees

[Purveyor]

Source: Military Times

Jul. 21, 2013 - 03:37PM |

JOINT BASE CHARLESTON, S.C. — The audience gasped in surprise and gave a few low whistles as Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel delivered the news that furloughs, which have forced a 20 percent pay cut on most of the military’s civilian workforce, probably will continue next year, and it might get worse.

“Those are the facts of life,” Hagel told about 300 Defense Department employees, most of them middle-aged civilians, last week at an Air Force reception hall on a military base in Charleston.

Future layoffs also are possible for the department’s civilian workforce of more than 800,000 employees, Hagel said, if Congress fails to stem the cuts in the next budget year, which starts Oct. 1.

On the heels of the department’s first furlough day, and in three days of visits with members of the Army,Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps, Hagel played the unenviable role of messenger to a frustrated and fearful workforce coping with the inevitability of a spending squeeze at the end of more than a decade of constant and costly war.

Read more: http://www.militarytimes.com/article/20130721/NEWS05/307210006/Hagel-Furloughs-may-continue-next-year-for-DoD-employees

[dusty trails]

1. Cuts in defense

I wish we'd stop manufacturing obsolete weapons (i.e tanks, etc) just because they're built in some congressman's back yard. The House this year passed a bill to buy more tanks that the Pentagon doesn't want/need.
If i recall correctly, they were manufactured in Boner's district?

[Historic NY]

2. A friends wife complaining about losing all her overtime...

Hagel is right, “Those are the facts of life,” you can't depend on extra money when those around you are losing weekly pay.

[on point]

3. Cut defense by 50%. And we are on our way to balanced budget

Or tax the wealthy and corps more for protecting their interests!

[Marrah_G]

4. There are other placed to cut besides wages

[byeya]

7. Sure, mansions and servants for generals and admirals; golf courses for the military; high

pay for the officer corps.

[byeya]

5. + +

Military spending is non-productive spending and a drain on the economy.

[underpants]

6. This won't affect defense contractors billing will it?

OH GOD tell me it won't affect defense contractors billing!!!!

[byeya]

8. And the margins, the poor poor profit margins

[pam4water]

9. Are they cutting the private contract firms that take up ~70% of the "National Security" Budget?

Because that would be progress.

[99th_Monkey]

10. When I was in the Army "Furlough" meant ME getting 'free time'

Now it apparently means the Guv-mint "gets 20% of my time for free".

[on point]

11. Incorrect. It means in this case you do not work or get paid for 20% of time.

guvmint doesn't get your work, and you don't get paid.

[99th_Monkey]

12. New Oxford American says otherwise...

Furlough
noun
leave of absence, esp. that granted to a member of the armed services : a civil servant home on furlough | a six-week furlough in Australia.
• a temporary release of a convict from prison : a system that allowed murderers to leave prison for weekend furloughs.
• a layoff, esp. a temporary one, from a place of employment.

verb [ trans. ]
grant such leave of absence to.
• lay off (workers), esp. temporarily : President Reagan furloughed “nonessential” employees | [as adj. ] ( furloughed) factories are apt to recall some furloughed workers.

~~~~ * ~~~~ * ~~~~ * ~~~~ * ~~~~ * ~~~~ * ~~~~ * ~~~~ * ~~~~ * ~~~~ * ~~~~ * ~~~~ *
There is no mention either way about getting paid or not, but it seems to imply by silence that it is a paid leave, as was my 2-week furlough (paid leave) from the Army for Christmas. It wasn't like they "didn't pay" me for that time, because they did. That was in the 60's however, when the Army wasn't so stingy with it's troops.

[on point]

13. All those definitions are correct, but the list is incomplete and does not include this one

[99th_Monkey]

14. which one?

did you forget something?

[on point]

15. Duh. You seem one monkey short of wisdom

Furlough when a company or guvmint lays you AND you don't get paid

Your understanding of this furlough is NOT CORRECT

[99th_Monkey]

16. ..Just because you say so?

Thanks but no thanks.

Actually, if anything, you are making my point. If that is what "furlough" NOW means
in the US Military (not like the 60's or according to New Oxford Dictionary) ipso facto
"just because they say so" <-- end of discussion.