• Thanks for stopping by. Logging in to a registered account will remove all generic ads. Please reach out with any questions or concerns.

I am a CAF member & I want better pay and benefits (a merged thread)

Status
Not open for further replies.
MARS said:
Not sure what any of this has to do with the parking rates, but since we are comparing our jobs to our civilian equivalents, lets look at what I did lately:  two weeks ago I had a massive Cormorant helicopter hovering about 15 feet over my head while a couple of SAR techs sorta fastroped onto the deck of my ship and extracted a casualty.  That was followed up shortly after by a small boat swarm "attack" with thunderflashes going off all around me and blank automatic weapons fire being traded back and forth.  Just last week my .50cal gunners blew the $hit out of a small skiff, putting out about 800 rounds of lead in pretty short order.  Next week I'm gonna go blow stuff up.  Then I'm gonna go lob HE shells at an even bigger boat as fast as my guys and gals can reload the weapon, all the while doing manoeuvres with a couple of TICONDOROGA Class Guided Missile Cruisers, a bunch of frigates and an assortment of other kickass ships. At some point the boys and girls from SOFCOM are gonna come around asking if I can help them out with their training again.  I walk down the flats of my ship and people literally get out of my way, and they just about come to the position of attention as well, although I require them to do neither of these things.  When I get to the Bridge, the whole room DOES come to Attention and some on briefs me on what is going on without me even having to open my mouth.  I get paid vacations to some really jammy (and some not so jammy) ports that other people pay to visit.  While I am there I wear this pretty cool looking uniform that tends to gather a lot of pleasant attention from the local women and usually gets me free drinks.

I'm not entirely sure what an ENG04 is, but I assume it to be a civilian engineer of some sort.  I envision this person as some  guy who works for NASA and who wears white socks with black pants, a tie with a short sleeve shirt and brings their lunch to work in a sad brown paper bag.  (I am quite sure this ISN'T the case for most Engineers, but from where I sit and given what I do, it makes little difference).  What, of the things I listed above - which is by no means the neatest stuff I have ever done - did this ENG04-person do in the same period??  When is the last time - or first time - someone moved out of HIS way?  When was the last time he fired a heavy machine gun with ACDC playing in his ear?

If this sounds like a pompous, reminded POV and an unfair characterization of others, well, it is supposed to.  It is a bit tangential, if also a bit a**hellish, certainly. What I, indeed all of us in uniform do, is f***ing COOL.  What a LOT of other folks do...isn't. It continually takes my civilian friends to remind me of this, but they do, and often.  When I go to parties with them, THEIR jobs are never the topic of conversation.

If I was to reduce my job to dollars and cents, then granted, I might not be doing it.  But dollars and cents and bennies isn't what gets me off - living out my childhood fantasy does.  I suppose if I couldn't do this, then dollars and cents and bennies would HAVE to be my goal to numb the pain of sitting in a cubicle cloock-watching the day away waiting for the weekend.

Just do whatever makes you happy.  If your job isn't cool, well that sucks.  You probably shoulda looked for one that was.  If the lack of vacation and moving and parking fees is really the 9th gate of hell, then for the love of everything unholy, GTFO..lol.  I know I would if I felt that way.

You will have to excuse me, the sun is setting and it is about time for a tracer-loaded night time .50cal heavy machine gun shoot.  So cool.

I'll make one simple point...

If the people under you who "literally get out of my way, and they just about come to the position of attention as well,..." are complaining about pay and benefits, maybe it's in your best interests to listen to them rather than come here and talk about how much respect and authority you command.  While I get that we are paid more than our base civilian counterparts, most troops are smart enough to see that we are losing what were benefits at the same time we being asked to do more with less. This leads good qualified people, like Stokers to leave and make their way elsewhere. When enough people leave because they are disgusted  there will be nobody to man the lines to get the boats off the wall, or stand in the flats at attention to appease your ego.

EDIT: To clarify, I get that you were trying to make a bit of a joke of it all, but it comes across as arrogant and condescending.
 
Interesting thread. For the record, i'm of the belief that we shouldn't have to settle for any benefit cuts or have any new fee's such as parking imposed on us.  I make good money but at the end of the day anything takes money out of the pockets of my subordinates I will oppose. It seems like we're being held up to the same standard as the PS, and to be honest as General Hillier had said before we're not just another department. Where exactly will all this end and what is next? Pensions, pays cuts? Its death by a thousand cuts.
 
WeatherdoG said:
EDIT: To clarify, I get that you were trying to make a bit of a joke of it all, but it comes across as arrogant and condescending.

WeatherDog,

I get your point as well.  I was afraid it might have come across that way, and debated posting that.  Since I wondered about it in the first place, I likely shouldn't have, since you are all reading my words and not hearing me speak.  Everyone has different experiences - my career started out as a Boatswain in a destroyer - and not everyone will have the same experiences as me.

Of course, it wasn't meant to.  Of course I listen to my subordinates' concerns on these very issues.  They certainly aren't going to complain to the Base Commander directly on Parking rates or whoever is in charge of PLD, or DCBA on the reductions in whatever thy have reduced this week, etc.  As the CO of a small ship, I also routinely hear these concerns directly from OS Bloggins while we are in the smoking pit together.  So I have a responsibility to answer them in such a way as to not blow smoke up his or her ass but to also keep their esprit de corps up.  And of course I have my own gripes, but I don't get to complain down the chain, only up the chain to more senior officers who are too busy to pay me much mind.  I guess my intent, as messed up as it came out in my post, was to look inward at those cool and interesting things that made each one of us sign on the dotted line.  I wasn't born into a CO position - it took me 4 years as an NCM and 15 years as a MARS officer to get here.  Hell, I don't even get to actually DO the cool stuff like shoot anymore.  But for each and everyone of us, SOMETHING attracted us to our individual occupations.  I constantly have to try and keep my Ship's Company engaged in the face of these cuts or else morale suffers, which means my operational effectiveness suffers, and both of those things are REAL problems for me.  I do the same thing when I occasionally look around and think "why am I still here?" (which I do).  And somtimes I have to look harder for the motivation to keep my esprit de corps up, but it is there, just not alway in the most obvious places, like pay and bennies.

Transporter - you are certainly correct.  I dread the prospect of life after Command.  I will nver get to go back to sea again and a cubicle will become my reality.  Doubt I will be able to hack it for very long - hopefully at least until I reach my pensionable time-in, at which point I will likely go back to working in a kitchen if my old bones can still handle it.  But I guess that is my solution - if I really, really hate what I am doing in whatever cubicle I am assigned, then I'm not going to be able to get out of bed every morning to go do it.  Perhaps, as ERC stated, that 'satisfaction' will take different, more indirect forms and perhaps that will make it fun(?)/worthwhile to stay.  I guess I will have to see. 

It's not just being an officer, or in my case a CO, where yes, people do treat you quite differently than other officers of my rank.  My Coxn wouldn't dream of being an officer - he quite enjoy being a Coxn, but not as much as he enjoyed being a Chief Engineer, and he LOVED having spent his career as a marine engineer, even as an Ordinary Seaman.  Whatever vooodoo goes on in the engine spaces - which I will never understand to any great extent and I am certain I wouldn't enjoy - he loves.  He finds it 'cooler' than anythinghting that an officer does. The same for my radar operators, radio operators, boatswains, etc.  Thy aren't without their complaints, but I think they all love some aspect of their job SO MUCH, that it outweighs the negatives.

I apologize to anyone else who reads my earlier post and thinks me some sort of dink.  And I apologize to all the huge-brained engineers who probably do much more important work than I will ever do, regardless of their sartorial style. I am heartened that everyone appears to have seen through my poorly worded ramble and managed to decipher my intent.

Jollyjacktar - I agree with you as well.  No dog in the fight and I likely have it 'better' than most - at this specific point in my career.  I will also lose my parking priviledge in Septmeber and will pay the 75 bucks or whatever - likely for a spot at the wrong end of the parking lot from my gate of choice.

The Parking fees and our pay and, and, and, are not irelevant things to bitch about.  As long as people are complaining then they think there is still someone listening.  I guess the tone the thread had taken annoyed me and I just wanted people to remember how cool the stuff we do is...and is that not enough to prevent the sky from falling? (and I'm not even the guy who gets to jump out of the helicopter, at night, onto the deck of a pitching ship)

Thanks,

MARS
 
Chief Stoker said:
Interesting thread. For the record, i'm of the belief that we shouldn't have to settle for any benefit cuts or have any new fee's such as parking imposed on us.  I make good money but at the end of the day anything takes money out of the pockets of my subordinates I will oppose. It seems like we're being held up to the same standard as the PS, and to be honest as General Hillier had said before we're not just another department. Where exactly will all this end and what is next? Pensions, pays cuts? Its death by a thousand cuts.

Hey,...finally a post with constructive information. That is the kind of saying that a good Union would take forth and use as an argument with an arbitrator against cuts and rollbacks. [sorry, with all the grief I get about being a long-standing Union guy on this site I had to get that shot in ;D] 

In my observations, shouts from the peanut gallery do zero to further the cause, but when a higher-up states a documented line like that, then to quote a TV show, "That's gold Jerry."
The problem is right now the only delivery system you have is the media, and little cutbacks here and there won't interest their piranha-like needs.

 
I think that MARS' post is excellent.  :nod:

But then, I've never had the mindset of a whiney, self-entitled civil servant.....who happens to wear a uniform.  I'm a soldier.  My job rocks.



By the way, even whiney, self-entitled civil servants have to pay for parking; get over yourself.  If that's your major crisis, WalMart employees get to park for free.
 
Journeyman said:
By the way, even whiney, self-entitled civil servants have to pay for parking; get over yourself.  If that's your major crisis, WalMart employees get to park for free.

:salute:

Well said!
 
Journeyman said:
I suspect that I've just been added to a couple more ignore lists.    :'(

Meh....


At least you get paid enough to pay for parking!  :P
 
It'd be interesting to see a list compiled of all the benefits that have been cut/frozen/scaled back in this "death by a thousand cuts."  You'd think, if that list was compiled, there would be a lot more advocacy against said cuts and the cumulative effect it's had/is having on our members.
 
Journeyman said:
I think that MARS' post is excellent.  :nod:

But then, I've never had the mindset of a whiney, self-entitled civil servant.....who happens to wear a uniform.  I'm a soldier.  My job rocks.



By the way, even whiney, self-entitled civil servants have to pay for parking; get over yourself.  If that's your major crisis, WalMart employees get to park for free.

My jobs rock too.

Being in Corrections ain't all that bad. And there are lots of self important whiny people there too.....and now to introduce you to the inmates..... >:D

And being the RSM of two units that are grouped rock too.
 
Crispy Bacon said:
It'd be interesting to see a list compiled of all the benefits that have been cut/frozen/scaled back in this "death by a thousand cuts."  You'd think, if that list was compiled, there would be a lot more advocacy against said cuts and the cumulative effect it's had/is having on our members.

So far:

1.  In major urban areas where there is a market, charges for parking (so nothing for Valcartier, Wainwright, Petawawa, Cold Lake...)

2.  Increases in pension contributions in line with those made by the Public Service (which will mean that CFSA contributions will remain under 50%, since the CFSA benefits are of greater value)

 
3. Seperation Allowance for those on IR
4. Mortgage Breaking fees
5. Utility contract breaking fees
6. TB refusal to account for depressed markets, in regards to lost equity.
7. Clawbacks on PLD
8. TB Failure to update PLD on a yearly basis.
 
9.  Payments into Ontario Health Care Plan (for those posted to locations in Ontario) that you are not entitled to use.
 
10. Loss of LTA for personnel on long term Class B/Class C
11. Loss of CTA for personnel on long term Class B/Class C
 
George Wallace said:
9.  Payments into Ontario Health Care Plan (for those posted to locations in Ontario) that you are not entitled to use.

But your dependants are.

(And that's not a change made by the employer - that's by an entirely different level of government)
 
ModlrMike said:
Which was replaced by a pension. Which the members asked for.
I don't think there was a link between the establishment of the Reserve Pension c. 2007 and the elimination of the RFRG in 2012.

Also I should rephrase:
12. Severance pay (Reg F) and Reserve Force Retirement Gratuity
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top