Inevitable story really. My view is that in the case of specialists both medical and some others, the costs are justified. But for non-specialists we should severely limit the top up pay and if we lose some reservists who we cannot afford to mobilise then so be it. The reserves are supposed to be a cheap option. If we could afford an expensive/better option we would just have lots of regulars.
BC, I have to point a few things out here.
Firstly, only around 30% of reservists claim the Reservist Award, and the actual number of reservists on £100k plus is less than 1% of the ~850 or so who have deployed this year; the absolute cost is tiny.
Secondly, a TA soldier claiming RA, even at £100k, which is unlikely in the extreme, is still likely to be much cheaper over both a three and five year period and a full career. For example, according to my fag packet estimates, based on a capitation factor of 2.5x salary (in use in my staff position in 200
, a regular captain deploying on ops as part of a three year cycle would cost £300k, and a reservist Captain on a 'very rare' £100k salary would cost £170k. So I ask you, if you are measuring purely financial efficiency, which one do you hire? Note also that the reason this salary is rare in the TA is because such jobs don't usually allow one enough time to join the TA (or in fact do much else), and that people on those sorts of salaries are often very good at what they do-given the vast range in talent in the Army, perhaps we could try and tap into this pool for the Army's benefit?
Thirdly, contractors on short term contracts for any employer cost a significant amount more than regular staff; in my business, for example, it is perhaps 300% more. This reflects two things. Namely that demand from the employer exceeds supply from the labour market, and so the 'price' of labour has to increase to attract new candidates, and that contractors have zero job security and can be hired and fired at will. Perhaps the Army likes to think it is a special case, and the fact that the MoD tries to avoid paying the full price for labour by hiding behind legislation probably indicates this. But it isn't, and if it tries to avoid paying the full rate, potential recruits will make a rational economic choice about how to spend their time, and not join. It's very simple economics, and if more restrictive terms and conditions were introduced which effectively depressed the wage on offer significantly below both what civilian employment offers, and the value that people place on their spare time, you can watch the potential recruits walk out the door, tearing up FR2020 as they go-and whether you agree with it or not, it's here to stay so the Army has to make it work.
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