Home » Employment News » Navy Will Cut 500 Civilian East Coast Jobs

Navy Will Cut 500 Civilian East Coast Jobs

By Nagasunder in Employment News, posted September 24, 2021

To fulfill Navy Region Mid-Fiscal Atlantic’s Year 2022 budget objective, 500 Navy civilian employees on the East Coast will be laid off, and port jobs activities will be limited to daylight Monday through Friday.

On Tuesday, Navy officials told USNI News that 300 civilians from Naval Facilities Engineering Systems Command Mid-Atlantic and 200 from Navy Region Mid-Atlantic (CRMA) would be laid off as part of a $66 million budget cut for US Navy jobs and shore facilities from Maine to Virginia and as far west as Illinois.

According to a Navy officer, the majority of the CRMA civilians will come from family services and Morale Welfare and Recreation jobs . Early retirement and voluntary buyouts will be used to minimize the number of posts available.

“CNRMA staff completed a comprehensive review of our products and services to develop a plan to manage and execute shore services with our $66M (16 percent reduction) budgetary shortfall to our facilities programs to minimize negative impacts to the Fleet, Fighters, and Families we support,” CRMA head Rear Adm. Charles Rock outlined in a memo reviewed by USNI News.

“Toward that end and given the lack of flexibility to cut utility costs, we prioritized resources to mitigate potential impacts to mission readiness while focusing on ensuring continuity of operations, on including our primary responsibility for life safety and security.”

The reductions also include limiting ship departures to reduce overtime for necessary dockworkers and harbor pilots to get ships underway and back to the pier. “To reduce overtime costs, these hours will be more strictly enforced to core weekday working hours. Rock wrote that ships and submarines should only depart and arrive at Navy-controlled ports Mon-Fri between 0630-1500,” Rock wrote.

Commands needing ships to leave outside the port hours need to reimburse CMRA and NAVFAC for the extra cost. While not a new policy, it has not been enforced, officials told USNI News. Other reductions include reducing the CMRA fleet of vehicles by 1,300, reducing morale, welfare and recreation facilities, cutting back on janitorial services and groundskeeping spending and canceling cable television for ships and submarines that are pier side.

“Your respective installation’s leadership will communicate installation-specific changes as the year progresses and remain open to your feedback on how these changes may impact your mission and personnel,” Rock said in the message.

“With limited budgets, a necessary focus on warfighting and Great Power Competition is required and past business and funding practices are no longer affordable and sustainable; drastic action is required.” The changes will begin to go into effect at the start of Fiscal Year 2022 on Oct. 1

Source: USNI News