MILITARY UPDATE
Bill would allow extra pay for certain assignments
Military Update focuses on issues affecting pay, benefits and lifestyle of active and retired servicepeople. Its author, Tom Philpott, is a Virginia-based syndicated columnist and freelance writer. He has covered military issues for almost 25 years, including six years as editor of Navy Times. For 17 years he worked as a writer and senior editor for Army Times Publishing Co. Philpott, 49, enlisted in the U.S. Coast Guard in 1973 and served as an information officer from 1974-77.
By Tom Philpott
The Senate Armed Services Committee has endorsed a new personnel management tool that would use extra pay to entice service members to take unpopular overseas assignments or hard-to-fill jobs.
Assignment Incentive Pay, if enacted by Congress, would move the military closer to a market-base compensation system, with pay in certain locales or for certain jobs shaped not only by traditional factors — rank, job skill, marital status and local rents — but by job market supply and demand.
The Navy plans to test the new pay in fiscal 2003, setting aside $1 million for what it first called Distribution Incentive Pay. Navy officials swayed Defense pay experts. More surprising, the White House Office of Management and Budget came aboard.
Assignment Incentive Pay could be set as high as $1,500 a month, under a Senate bill, though no service expects to go near that ceiling anytime soon.
The Navy is said to favor offers of $200 a month, climbing as high as $400 to get critically skilled personnel to accept assignments in remote stations on Crete, Iceland, Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean and even South Korea. The Navy also would use it to reduce sea/shore rotation challenges.
It might prove attractive on a wider scale for the Army in South Korea where decades of infrastructure neglect have left severe quality of life challenges. Army Gen. Thomas A. Schwartz, who retired May 1 as commander of U.S. Forces in South Korea, complained that too many soldiers chose separation or retirement over accepting a tour in South Korea. He blamed living conditions and pay.
Schwartz said soldiers in South Korea face comparable dangers to the combat zones of Bosnia and Kosovo but don't receive imminent danger pay or combat zone tax breaks. The pay disparity is sharp enough to affect morale, Schwartz said, and to discourage voluntary transfers to South Korea.
At Schwartz's request the Army reviewed, then rejected, the idea of awarding imminent danger pay to service members in South Korea, or even raising hardship duty pay to the ceiling of $300. Service members in the demilitarized zone do get an extra $150 a month; those outside the DMZ receive an extra $50 a month.
Neither the Defense Department nor the Senate Armed Services Committee is inclined to force the Army, or any service, to use Assignment Incentive Pay. But if enacted, it is seen as a cost-effective option to keep select assignments filled.
The Navy surfaced the concept as part of Project SAIL (Sailor Advocacy through Interactive Leadership), which is Adm. Vern Clark's plan, as chief of naval operations, to transform how sailors are educated and assigned. The emphasis is on setting career goals and paths to achieve them. Tools include "real-time incentive packages to encourage sailors to take specific assignments."
The Navy already is testing a location re-enlistment bonus to entice sailors with certain skills not only to stay in but also to transfer to particular areas and jobs. Such bonuses can only be offered to individuals up for re-enlistment, however. Assignment incentive pay is more flexible, and will be the Navy's second new tool for sending sailors where they're needed most.
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