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STATEMENT
OF
LIEUTENANT
GENERAL GARRY L. PARKS
UNITED
STATES MARINE CORPS
DEPUTY COMMANDANT FOR MANPOWER AND RESERVE
AFFAIRS
18
JULY 2001
Mr.
Chairman and members of the Subcommittee:
I
am pleased to appear before you today to
discuss our Manpower budget as it relates to
military personnel in the United States Marine
Corps. In
the active force, our current budget funds
17,888 officers and 154,712 enlisted.
Roughly 70 percent of our Manpower
Personnel budget funds basic pay and retired
pay accrual.
The remaining dollars fund such items
as Basic Allowance for Housing (BAH),
Permanent Change of Station (PCS) relocations,
Subsistence and Social Security.
This leaves roughly 7 tenths of 1
percent in the Manpower account to pay for
discretionary items such as our Selective
Reenlistment Bonus (SRB) or College Fund
Recruitment programs.
PAY
& COMPENSATION
The
Marine Corps appreciates the efforts the
members of this committee have made to help
raise the standard of living for our Marines.
The President’s budget will bolster
readiness and improve morale. It is robust pay
increases as seen in the President’s budget
that will help in this objective.
In our exit surveys, compensation is
one of the stronger reasons Marines decide not
to reenlist. The $1B earmarked for basic pay will begin to make the needed
adjustments to the pay table and help us move
toward parity with market wages.
The President’s budget targets those
areas of our population that have the biggest
disparity with their civilian counterparts. Regular
military compensation, basic pay, housing and
subsistence allowances are all marked for
improvement in fiscal year 2002.
Those improvements will make a positive
impact on the decision to stay by many of our
Marines.
This year we decrease the Out of Pocket
(OoP) expense between current housing market
costs and the housing allowance we pay our
service members to 11.3 percent. We are on track to reduce OoP expense to zero by 2005.
Additionally, the flexibility in the
housing allowance rate-setting process was
instrumental in meeting the needs of our
Marines in southern California.
That is, utility cost increases were
forecasted in the fall of 2000 and the 2001
housing rates were adjusted to meet the rising
costs.
RETENTION
OVERVIEW
A
successful recruiting effort is merely the
first step in the process of placing a
properly trained Marine in the right place at
the right time.
The dynamics of our manpower system
then must match skills and grades to our
Commanders’ needs throughout the operating
forces. The
Marine Corps endeavors to attain and maintain
stable, predictable retention patterns. However, as is the case with recruiting, civilian
opportunities abound for our Marines as
private employers actively solicit our young
Marine leaders for lucrative private sector
employment.
Intangibles – such as the desire to
serve our nation and the satisfaction received
from leadership responsibilities provided in
our Corps - are a large part of the reason we
retain the men and women who choose to
continue to be Marines after their initial
commitment.
Concrete evidence of this is seen in
our deployed units, which continually record
the Corps’ highest reenlistment rates.
Retention success is also partly a
consequence of the investment we make in
supporting our operational forces – to give
our Marines what they need to do their jobs in
the field, as well as the funds we earmark for
educating and training these terrific men and
women.
Enlisted
We
are very mindful of enlisted retention issues.
Our enlisted force is the backbone of
our Corps and we make every effort to retain
our best people.
Although we are experiencing minor
turbulence in some specialties, the aggregate
enlisted retention situation is encouraging.
Some shortages exist in high-tech MOSs
that represent an important part of our war
fighting capability, and these young Marines
remain in high demand in the civilian sector.
We are a young force, making accessions
a chief concern for manpower readiness.
Of the 154,000 active duty enlisted
force, over 23,000 are still teenagers -
108,000 are still on their first enlistment.
In FY01, we will have reenlisted
approximately 27% of our first term eligible
population.
These 6,069 Marines represent 100% of
the Marines we need to transition into the
career force, and marks the eighth consecutive
year we will have achieved this objective.
On balance, however, we have observed a
slight increase in the number of first term
Marines we need to reenlist each year.
To counter this rising first term
reenlistment requirement, we will focus
greater attention on retaining Marines in
their 8th through 12th
years of service.
One of the new initiatives we
anticipate introducing in FY02 is a Subsequent
Term Alignment Plan (STAP), which focuses on
retaining experience.
Due to the strong draw of civilian
sector opportunity, we must elevate the
importance of our career force by paying
additional attention as well as resources to
keep the experience level of our force on par
with previous years.
This
year we continue to see smaller first term
non-EAS attrition rates, figures similar to the lower attrition experienced in fiscal years
1999 and 2000 when compared to previous
historical rates. The implementation of the Crucible and the Unit Cohesion
programs are contributing to improved
retention among our young Marines that are
assuming the cultural values of the Corps
earlier in their career.
The impact of lower non-EAS attrition
allowed us to reduce our accession mission in
FY00 and FY01.
This ‘Good News’ may allow us to do
the same in FY02 if the attrition rate
declines further. The ‘Bad News’ of this is that it has increased the cost
of our Manpower account by increasing the
average length of service of individual
Marines.
However, this is the type of bad news
we don’t mind having as these positive
results have reduced the burden placed on our
recruiters, as well as provided our force with
extra experience.
In the larger context, we are extremely
pleased with our recruiting and retention
situation.
We anticipate meeting our aggregate
personnel objectives and we continue to
successfully maintain the appropriate balance
of first term and career Marines. The management of youth and experience in our enlisted ranks
is critical to our success and we are
extremely proud of our accomplishments.
We attack our specialty shortages with
the highly successful Selective Reenlistment
Bonus (SRB) program.
Shortages persist in some highly
technical specialties, such as intelligence,
data communications experts, and air command
and control technicians.
Currently, the Marine Corps has
allotted $40M in SRB new payments to assist
our reenlistment efforts in FY01.
This program has significantly aided
our reenlistment rates and improved retention
for some of our critical skill shortages.
In FY02 we have allotted $47M in new
payments as a result of the recent $15M
increase authorized for SRB in the
President’s budget.
In FY01 we successfully initiated lump
sum bonus payments increasing the net present
value of the incentive and positively
influencing highly qualified, yet previously
undecided, personnel.
It is a powerful incentive for the
undecided to witness another Marine’s
reenlistment and award of SRB in the total
amount.
Officers
By
and large, officer retention continues to
experience success with substantive
improvements in retention, beginning in FY00.
Our FY01 results continue to reflect an
overall officer attrition rate that is closer
to our historical rates.
We believe that the reduction of
voluntary separations may be attributed to the
congressionally approved compensation triad
and the strategic, albeit limited, use of
special pays.
As with the enlisted force, we still
have some skill imbalances within our officer
corps, especially in the aviation specialties.
Although we are cautiously optimistic,
pilot retention remains a concern.
The FY01 Aviation Continuation
Pay (ACP) plan has higher aggregate "take
rates" than in previous years. Retaining
aviators involves a concerted effort in
multiple areas that have been identified as
impacting an officer’s decision to remain in
the Marine Corps.
Many recent FY00 and FY01 retention
initiatives have made substantial corrective
strides strengthening the Marine Corps’
position toward retaining aviation officers
(i.e., Marine Aviation Campaign Plan, and pay
reform). Supplementary
pay programs such as ACP provide an additional
incentive by lessening the significant
difference between civilian airline and
military compensation.
We anticipate a significant return on
our investment from ACP.
In FY01 and FY02 we increased ACP by
approximately $4M each year to focus on
retaining our mid-grade aviators (junior
majors and lieutenant colonels) and will
continue to reevaluate our aviation retention
situation to optimize all our resources.
Overall, the Marine Corps officer and
enlisted retention situation is very
encouraging.
Through the phenomenal leadership of
our unit commanders, we will achieve every
strength objective for FY01 and expect to
start FY02 heading in the proper direction.
Even though managing our retention
success has offered new challenges such as
maintaining the appropriate grade mix,
sustaining quality accessions, and balancing
occupational specialties, we will continue to
press forward in order to overcome these
obstacles.
In this difficult recruiting/retention
environment, the so-called “War for
Talent,” the Marine Corps remains optimistic
about our current situation and expect these
positive trends to continue.
FAMILIES
We
believe that while we may recruit
Marine-aspirants, we retain Marine families.
Your support of our families’ Quality
of Life (QoL) has contributed to our retention
success. Congressional support in allocating and sustaining resources
for our bases and stations has a profound
impact on our readiness.
Our bases serve as a sanctuary for our
families, a launching pad for our deployments,
and they ensure our Marines have adequate
space for training.
We are not only focused on training but
on learning and education as well.
Expansion of our distance learning
program to ensure that the greatest number of
our high quality young men and women have the
opportunity to pursue education is just one
area of focus for the Marines.
It is when our Marines are confident
that the Corps’ first instinct is to care
for their welfare that they will concentrate
on mission accomplishment.
Families, in turn, are then more
supportive of their Marine’s career.
Over the past years we have utilized
our Marine Corps Community Services (MCCS) to
better serve our Marines and their families.
MCCS retains strong capabilities with
programs focused on increasing the QoL of our
Marines and their families.
The Marine Corps has always prided
itself on its ability to do more with less. This is reflected in that the Corps provides twenty percent of
our nation’s ground and aviation combat
force with just six percent of the Department
of Defense budget.
Your Marine Corps remains strong and
able to accomplish its mission, yet only a
sustained increase in resources will yield the
flexibility and resilience we need in both the
short and long term.
Our successes have been achieved by
following the same core values today that gave
us victory on yesterday’s battlefields.
With your support, we can continue to
achieve our goals and provide our Marines with
what they need to accomplish their tasks.
Marines are proud of what they are
doing. They
are proud of the Eagle, Globe and Anchor and
what it represents to our country.
It is our job to provide for them the
leadership, resources, QoL and moral guidance
to carry our proud Corps forward.
With your support, a vibrant Marine
Corps will continue to meet our nation’s
call as we have for the past 225 years!
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