Navy Cuts Taking Their Toll


This afternoon I had the opportunity to speak with Jennifer Beasley, the spouse of a Navy officer recently ‘downsized.’ According to Mrs. Beasley, her husband – a sailor and 12-year veteran of the Navy – was recently released from his contract not for poor performance, but as part of a larger cost-cutting initiative. Mrs. Beasley said that the downsizing negated most of his service history and benefits.

The story was first reported by the Navy Times, and was recently popularized by Lisa Wexler, a Metro New York-based talk radio host. Mrs. Wexler recently wrote for The Huffington Post:

What is happening is that close to 3,000 enlisted men and women are being downsized from the navy. That’s right — downsized. Not fired due to performance, or transferred to another station. They have been given their walking papers in the middle of their stints and told to find something else to do. Go find another house, another job, another health plan. That’s the thanks they get for signing on the dotted line, volunteering to sacrifice their lives for our country. That’s the thanks they get for loaning their spouses out for months at a time, on duty that takes them away from the first day of kindergarten, birthdays, holidays and the day the dog died.

According to Mrs. Wexler, Mrs. Beasley and her husband are one of over three thousand military families affected by the downsizing. The families have recently established a Facebook page to filed inquiries.

At press time the office of the Navy was unavailable for comment.

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  • Joe

    This is absurd. The pendulum has swung too far because many of the rates (Navy jobs) that were susceptible to ERB (“downsizing”) are now getting SRB’s (enlistment bonuses). That means that they were at one point overmanned in many jobs but now are actually undermanned in them. Also, they only looked at the overall rate, NOT what specific quals individuals had. Many people in certain rates had additional quals that helped their ship or squadron out but when they were seperated because the overall navy-wide rate was overmanned, the ship or squadron was undermanned for that certain collateral duty, like QA. This created readiness issues and some sailors had to be “cross-decked” to fill the gaps. Some just came off deployments and had to go TAD (temporary assigned duty) to other commands going right back out to sea again for 6-8 months.

  • http://www.facebook.com/christine.mccallisterbailey Christine McCallister-Bailey

    What I love is the government realizes how undermanned they are for sea duty billets. They are offering sailors $1,000 extra a month to do back to back sea duty!

  • Mike

    To further show that the navy was not and is not overmanned the Navy just initiated a program that is allowing current naval reservist to full time active duty. They are also offering sign on bonuses to the reservist that qualify and are excepted to this program. With that said how is this justified??

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