Pusser
Army.ca Veteran
- Reaction score
- 32
- Points
- 530
PuckChaser said:Sea Duty Allowance?
Time off definitely needs to be put out there though. CA goes 365 DAG red if you're deploying over a certain timeframe, and I've heard waivers being constantly declined in the later years of Afg to manage pers tempo.
The trouble with SDA is that you don't actually have to go to sea in order to get it. As long as you're posted to a ship, you draw SDA, even if you're landed. Even more inequitable is the case of personnel posted to standard readiness ships compared to high readiness. The ship's company of a very busy ship receives the same SDA as one that spend most of its time alongside. The poor sap who really gets screwed is the one who keeps getting pierhead jumped from ship to another and spends 300+ days away per year, but he would receive the same SDA as the guy posted to a ship that is broken down and alongside for nine out of 12 months.
Years ago, I actually wrote a paper recommending that SDA should be paid out in the same manner as Field Operations Allowance (FOA) was (i.e. only paid for actual days at sea). In this way, it would have been a true incentive for sea duty (which is what it's supposed to be) as the only way to get it would be to go to sea. Those who went to sea a lot, would get a lot and those who didn't, wouldn't. One of the criticisms of my idea was that keeping track of sea-days would be overly difficult. At the time, I pointed out that if we could track every hour that aircrew spend flying, surely we could keep track of every day a person spent at sea without too much difficulty? Ironically, we now have to do that anyway in order to award the Sea Service Insignia (SSI). in another twist of fate, FOA disappeared and was replaced with LDA, with which we are having similar problems to those already identified with SDA...