So, here is a crazy idea to some of the underlying problems (as I see them) of unrestrained Class B bloat. As I see it we need a system that:
- prevents just anyone with a budget from using money for empire building
- ensures full time personnel growth has oversight & control at the appropriate levels
- allows full time pers to be centrally managed so that low priority positions are not filling-up and leaving high priority work unfilled
- ensures uniformity of training standards in full time pers
- provides an option for those pers who still want to serve, but cannot keep doing the postings
- provides a financial incentive for pers to continue serving when they reach the point where they are ready to get out
- does not provide a financial incentive that encourages pers, who would have kept serving, to reduce their utility to the CF
To do this, I propose that Class B employment > 100 days be prohibited outside of Primary Reserve Units & formations.
Instead, we create a "limited obligation" regular force TOS that are renewable on a three year cycle. The "limited obligation" means the regular force soldier never gets a posting out of the geographic region and is paid at the reserve rate.
A "limited obligation" regular force soldier would be managed by the same career manager as any other regular force member of the same occupation. Come APS, the "limited obligation" soldier would never receive a cost move to another location but there would be no restrictions against no-cost moves. The "limited obligation" soldier could be moved to fill a higher priority job, for career development reasons, or to avoid stagnant thinking within a staff organization. Promotions could still occur for "limited obligation" soldiers, but they would be penalized by point reduction at the boards to reflect the reduced utility of not being geographically postable.
Double-dipping would no longer be possible as this is simply an incentive to reduce one's utility to the CF by becoming unpostable. However, to provide an incentive for pers considering retirement to not leave entirely, pensionable "limited obligation" soldiers could stop paying into the pension (thus freezing the benefit at its current level) and recieve a pay top-up (so they make the same pay as though they were not "limited obligation").
Unrestrained growth would be put to a stop because the "limited obligation" still fills a regular force establishment position, and so any growth would have to go through the same checks & approvals as are required for getting new regular force PYs now.
There are a lot more finer hand details that would need to go into this concept. Occupations at or above PML would not be allowed to issue/renew "limited obligation" TOS (so those pers who choose to be of lower utility would be let go to make room for postable pers). At the same time, there should be an occupation manning level threshold above which pers may only convert to "limited obligation" TOS on expiry of a "full obligation" regular force TOS, but below this manning level threshold it would be acceptable for direct reserve component transfer into a "limited obligation" TOS.
If we were to go down this crazy path, implementation should involve identifying every Class B possition outside of reserve units/brigades that has existed for three or more years. All of those possitions would be converted to regular force and the incumbents would be invited to accept a component transfer and "limited obligation" TOS.
