Center working to reduce civilian personnel impacts

  • Published
  • By Chuck Paone
  • 66th Air Base Group Public Affairs
HANSCOM AIR FORCE BASE, Mass. --  The Electronic Systems Center is continuing efforts to avoid involuntary civilian personnel separations related to several recent rounds of cuts.

Personnel specialists have been working with Center Senior Functionals and supervisors to find placement options within the Center for the majority of people affected and are continuing to look for options for all others.

"All the VERA/VSIP approvals, along with ongoing attrition and careful placement efforts have significantly reduced the number of surplus employees remaining," said Sherry Farley, Manpower and Personnel director. "We're down to about 40, and we believe we'll be able to carry them until we place them."

Center-wide, ESC lost 547 positions as a result of the cuts, which were announced in November and January. Of those, just over a third, 192, were filled. The numbers specific to Hanscom AFB were 373 positions, 179 of which were filled.

However, all those numbers reflect changes from the current baseline. Additional information released by the Air Force shows that, when taking all position in-sourcing into account, total Hanscom civilian workforce authorizations, with current cuts factored in, are just about where they were in 2008. Nevertheless, the ESC Manpower and Personnel Directorate has undertaken a concerted effort to deal with the current reductions.

"This entire process really started about a year ago," said Farley. That's when ESC leaders first started to hear about the potential need to roll back what's known as civilian end-strength to Fiscal Year 2010 levels.

"We had been on an accelerated hiring path," Farley said. "For the first time in a really long time, we had maximized our civilian employment plan." That means the Center had used all the dollars and work-year authorizations it had been allotted.

It also meant that some hard braking would be required to reverse the trend. Otherwise far deeper cuts would ultimately be required. As a result ESC entered a hiring freeze in March 2011, one month ahead of Air Force Materiel Command and two months before the Air Force announced a service-wide freeze.

By late summer when firm indications of looming cuts arrived, ESC had not only stemmed the flow of new hires but had built up a reservoir of vacancies against which many of the cuts could be taken. Those vacancies also provided potential landing spots for employees encumbering positions slated to go away.

In September the Center announced the first of two Voluntary Early Retirement Authority/Voluntary Separation Incentive Pay (VERA/VSIP) windows. Limited to those who were in position to save others in targeted positions from job loss, the window was fairly narrow. Center-wide, 20 applicants were accepted, 11 of those at Hanscom.

Still, those numbers helped provide matching opportunities for some of those affected by the first round of cuts announced in early November 2011. Those cuts stemmed from Air Force-wide global base structure reductions and the AFMC plan to consolidate acquisition operations under a single Life Cycle Management Center.

The Air Force announced a second round of cuts in January and also a second VERA/VSIP round. This one, which with additional cuts also carried wider applicability, resulted in 93 approved applications across the Center, 58 of those at Hanscom.

The flexibility created by the voluntary separations and the expanding vacancy pool created by the hiring freeze have helped provide the matching opportunities needed to avoid involuntary separation. Aligning personnel to appropriate positions is an ongoing effort and will continue for the next several months.