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Seasoned Vet
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Issue Date: December 15, 2003
Overdue payday
Money for boarding ops ready at last; now who gets back pay?
By Mark D. Faram
Times staff writer
“Chief, when are we going to get paid?”
Signalman Chief (SW) Marc Tinaz heard those words from his boarding team aboard the cruiser Normandy almost as soon as the Navy announced Nov. 6 that visit, board, search and seizure operations now would qualify sailors for an extra $150 per month in hazardous-duty incentive pay.
Better still: The pay is retroactive to January 2002, before Normandy’s last deployment.
Tinaz hadn’t heard the pay had been approved — or even that it was in the works.
“It was always talked about at the scuttlebutt level, but we never heard anything official,” he said.
Neither did most sailors or officers. But beginning in January 2002, VBSS operations were, by law, on the list of official “hazardous duties,” alongside other risky jobs like flight-deck work, parachuting and demolition.
Navy crews have conducted more than 6,000 boardings worldwide since then, each one involving untold numbers of sailors. Navy officials won’t hazard a guess as to how many people are eligible for back pay, but some 1,320 sailors currently are assigned to billets where they could qualify for the pay in the future. Some ships already are starting to pay their sailors.
But when it comes to questions about back pay, things get murky in a hurry. Thousands of sailors are owed hundreds of dollars, but the Navy has no idea exactly how many are owed, how much they’re owed, or even how to make sure that everyone who rates the back pay gets it.
In all, well over 100 ships have taken part in such boardings since January 2002, but at least 17 of those ships have been decommissioned and an untold number of sailors who took part in boarding parties have transferred to new commands or left the Navy entirely. Nothing has been said yet about how to take care of them
Understanding the details
Vice Adm. Gerry Hoewing, the Navy’s chief of personnel, approved VBSS pay in a Nov. 3 memo that detailed the basic qualifications to receive it. To earn the $150 stipend, sailors must:
• Be a member of a 12-man VBSS team, trained and qualified for the duty.
• Participate in at least three boardings in any given month.
• Remain assigned to a team by an appropriate authority for an entire month.
But neither Hoewing’s memo nor the Nov. 6 administrative message to the fleet gives any hint about how the Navy will handle the sensitive matter of back pay. For that matter, neither does the pay guidance issued by the Defense Finance and Accounting Service on Nov. 13, which tells disbursing offices how to start and stop the pay but not much more.
Now the problem has been handed to the Naval Surface Force, which is scrambling to put together more details on how to tackle the two-year-old paper trail. Spokesmen say any formal guidance is still weeks away.
Capt. Rick Daniel, assistant chief of staff for training and readiness for Commander, Naval Surface Forces, said the retro pay is “what we are working hardest on.”
But there are so many problems — beginning with there being no uniform way of keeping such records — that the issue has proven more complex than anyone anticipated. “It’s taking time to work out the details,” Daniel said.
Some ships aren’t waiting for direction from above, however. Aboard Normandy, Tinaz and his shipmates assumed the ball was in their court.
“We looked at all our after-action reports from each boarding,” Tinaz said. “Those indicate the time and date of each vessel boarded.” Then they compared those to the rosters of who was on Normandy’s boarding team at that time.
By comparing the two lists, they were able to reconstruct who had participated in boardings over what period of time, and, as a result, who was eligible for back pay.
If the boardings had been conducted within the past year, Normandy’s disbursing department could have issued the pay itself. But because the boardings were all conducted more than a year ago, during a 2002 deployment, the ship had to forward the payment request to DFAS.
“Commands have the authority to pay sailors locally for up to 12 months,” said Lt. Wes Johnson, from the supply staff at Commander, Naval Surface Force, Pacific. “Anything older than that has to be paid through DFAS.”
Most ships probably won’t be as proactive as Normandy was, however, and officials say sailors shouldn’t wait for their old shipmates to take care of them. Instead, Johnson said, They should take responsibility for themselves.
“If sailors believe they’re eligible for this pay, they need to contact the command they were attached to when they did the boardings,” Johnson said. It doesn’t matter if the sailor has transferred to another command or even gotten out of the Navy altogether. Everyone who can prove he earned the pay will get paid.
“For those who’ve been discharged, their pay accounts have been closed, so DFAS will have to mail them a check,” he said.
Cmdr. Mark Sedlacek, commanding officer of the Norfolk, Va.-based destroyer Donald Cook, said he doesn’t believe his ship and crew took part in any boardings that would qualify. But, he added, “That doesn’t mean I don’t have sailors here who’ve done it on other ships. So we’ll be asking our sailors to come forward if they believe they are eligible and we’ll help them find out.”
Ghost commands
Some sailors will have a tougher time proving their eligibility than others. At least 17 ships — 13 destroyers and four frigates — have been decommissioned in the past two years. That’s why the policy details are taking so long, Daniel said. “We’re still working on this issue. We want to make sure we get all the details from this part of the process right and leave no one behind.”
Lt. Joe Mack, who works for Daniel on the surface forces training and readiness staff, said the easy part will be determining how many boardings each of these retired ships conducted and when they made them. “Boardings will be reflected in the deck log, so in the interim, we’ll be looking at that,” he said. “What we’re still wrestling with is the trail of records and the other associated administrative issues” to prove which sailors participated in which boarding operations.
The official policy only states that sailors must be assigned to a VBSS team by “competent authority.” That’s usually done by one or a combination of documents.
Cmdr. Larry Tindal, commanding officer of the Norfolk-based destroyer Oscar Austin, said every sailor on his ship has a memo certifying his participation in boarding ops.
“I put a letter on the ship’s letterhead in the service jacket of all my sailors qualified as members of a boarding team,” he said. In addition, he designates everyone assigned to a specific team in writing on the ship’s watch bill or collateral duty list, both of which are usually maintained by the executive officer.
Qualification and team assignments also can be noted in the administrative remarks, “page 13,” of a sailor’s service record.
Because it’s officially a collateral duty, Tinaz said he also makes sure it’s noted on his team member’s annual evaluations.
Any or all of these documents eventually may be needed by sailors to prove they participated in boarding operations at a command that’s not active anymore.
“We’re asking for patience on this until we get this worked out and approved,” Daniel said.
Details, details
Currently, ships are required to send boarding teams through formal training to be “certified” for deployment. But the new policy makes no provision for replacing team members during deployment.
“It’s up to commanding officers to designate their VBSS teams and ensure their members are trained and qualified,” said Capt. Chris Arendt, head of enlisted plans for the Navy’s chief of personnel in Arlington, Va.
Tindal said he believes that, as skipper, he can make any necessary substitutions to his teams — and substitutes can qualify for the pay even if they haven’t completed any formal training. “I’ve got the freedom to do that,” he said.
Not so clear is how the Navy will treat Coast Guard members or Navy SEALs who might be attached to a ship’s crew, but are not part of ship’s company. These would include Navy boat crews who work with Coast Guard Law Enforcement Detachments or Navy SEAL boarding teams.
“We haven’t come to a final answer on the issue of boarding teams that aren’t the ship’s own or are non-Navy,” Daniel said. “But we’ll probably determine that boat crews that are put at risk will qualify.”
The great delay
The long, tortured road to getting VBSS approved was paved with errors.
Believing only congressional approval was needed, the Navy tried to enact the pay in January 2002, once Congress had authorized the pay.
But, as Navy Times reported at the time, there was a catch: Even though Congress authorized the pay, the services couldn’t disburse it without presidential approval because of the way the law was written.
Because of a series of mistakes, that approval didn’t come until March 28, 2003 — nearly 14 months after the pay became law. It would take another seven months before the Navy would again announce its intention to start the pay — this time by a message and a policy memo.
Once the details are worked out, Sedlacek said, ships will find it relatively simple to track boardings for pay purposes.
Commands now will be required to use “tracking sheets” to document how many boardings each team member made and will have to keep a year’s worth of them on board for inspection purposes.
“We’re going to use a command log, much as we do with keeping track of helicopter landings for flight-deck pay,” he said. “But the fact that there’s now pay attached to it will get it a little more attention.
“But in the end, it’ll just be another standard, green Navy log book we have to keep track of.”
Mark D. Faram covers enlisted personnel issues. Reach him at (703) 750-8645 or by e-mail at mfaram@navytimes.com.
------------------------------------------------------------ Albert Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results. ------------------------------------------ 
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Masters of Hard Knocks from the University of Gravity
 
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Last Login: Today @ 3:46 PM
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It may take a year but they will get it.
All of the services have the abiltiy to make a casual pay for money due. Problem with casual pay is that it will be taken out of the future pay checks. If the actual pay authorization has not already been payed the sailor will just get shorted on a future pay check. Better to way, get the orders cut properly and have the finance pay the lump sum when the order are finalized.
"Si Vis Pacum Para Bellum"
If you want peace prepare for war!
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Paramedic
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I had the opportunity to go aboard the Normandy about a month ago for a tour with my Sea Cadets. Outstanding crew and great officers. This tour wasnt your standard run of the mill tour, they went all out for the kids.
Stay Safe,Phillip Al Asad, Iraq Bringing good medicine to bad places!!!!!
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Regular Joe
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I wonder if the USCG will ever get HazDuty Pay? They have been doing this since their inception and accepted it as part of their job. Never once did they demand extra pay for doing their JOB much less back pay....one more reason why I love the Coast Guard and hate the Navy.
PBR me ASAP
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