And I’d be interested to hear how RAFAC would work with bounty only. Would the bounty be for parade night attendance (e.g. 12 hours / month) or only weekend activities? The Reserve bounty is a good amount of money for far fewer hours than I do at the moment 
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I don’t think anyone doubts there will be changes, but unless you have actual written confirmation you’re willing to share it will just be speculation.
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I’m not. Hes talking male cow excrement!
What makes me wonder through all this thread is what is trying to be achieved with the changes?
Yes I absolutely accept, as a whole, the organisation needs to be more cost effective. That goes for every organisation large or small now thanks to Covid etc.
Then we rightly say VA isn’t pay. Fine, officially not, but let’s be honest, we all call it VA officially, but all know it as pay. And if we get a P60 for monies given to us, in my book (and the Tax man’s!) that is pay.
So let’s for a minute be daring and say its pay.
Do we want the pay system to deliver for us? Do we want it to provide quality individuals, willing to give up more time, sacrifice some of their working time (which really does pay the bills etc) and deliver quality activities for our Cadets?
Do we want it just to provide a one off token payment to everyone at a flat rate to hopefully keep everyone happy, but in doing so put off a lot of people going the extra mile, and helping justify our ‘hobby’ to family etc?
Do we be bold, rid ourselves of it totally, take the hit of loosing some people, but then rebuild a new system?
I would add that in using ‘the quality individual’ phrase, I wish in no means to belittle or demean CI’s etc who are outside of the scope of VA, as there are of course many fine, high quality CI’s out there, but ultimately if they want VA, an awful lot have the opportunity to enter uniform service, or already have been.
I just feel in general we seem to be kicking the can down the road here, and not addressing the major underlying issue.
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There are 2 issues that I can see:
-
By paying a fixed rate, which we need to pay tax and NI on, HQAC are potentially employing us as CFAV, without providing any of the legal minimums - minimum wage, sick days, holidays, and pension. HQAC need to move us away from that model.*
-
Saving Money. By creating a flat rate bounty model, all of those who would normally claim a couple of days a year will no longer be eligible. And those above the prescribed pay level (I’m guessing all of is) will take a cut.
*My personal conspiracy theory is that that is why we had the VR commission removed - all of the other reservists are not entitled to pension contributions, whereas HQAC would have been stuffed if they had to pay that for us. The Service Complaints excuse was just a smokescreen so no one started a legal challenge until it was too late. But that is a whole other subject…
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As has been said.
If the money is handed back to the treasury, the RAFAC doesnt get it for something else.
Its not a budget within RAFACs control.
If changes are made it will be tinkering or modifying of the terms of VA.
Not a wholesale hand back and then rewrite.
Equally HQAC know that they gain nothing by trying to be magnanimous and saying ‘we dont need VA anymore, here you go Treasurery have it back’ as they know they wont get anything in return AND it will just cause an exodus.
Best to leave it exactly as it is.
Again.
People want VA to cover their hobby.
Go into uniform.
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OR Just make the uniform allowance 100 fold higher…
The RAFAC commission was exactly that to break any claim to employment rights; there was massive fear that a big unfair dismissal claim was going to happen.
Sorting remuneration is the next thing as part of Cadet Force Strategy 2025.
The new arms length relationship with cadet forces will be signposted in the DWP on 22 March.
Department for Work and Pensions?
That’s what I thought I assume Defence White Paper. Drainingtheswamp has obviously had early sight
First sea Lord?
Or is he Secretary of State for Defence.
Blimey! I knew ACC was connected!! But I had no idea.
@Swamp please tell us more about this DWP so we can better prepare.
Back on topic…
Thinking about VA.
Perhaps another fair way of doing it is to relate the VA in some way to qualifications held?
So if a Sqn Ldr would get say £120 now. But that Sqn Ldr actually is not that useful and only has heartstart and climatic injuries signed off they get their pay scaled down accordingly.
Where as if we have a CI who becomes a Sgt or plt off, but in 5 years of CI they have gained 20 quals then they would get the top whack for their rank.
Yes it’s a bit more complex, but it actually applies value to peoples worth based on what they bring to the org.
Thoughts?
I unfortunately know far too many people who are completely useless but have every qualification under the sun. They dont use them, they simply like badge collecting.
It would also fill up courses with people who wont use the qualification but simply want a higher VA rate.
Ideal world, i like your idea. In reality its a very different picture out there.
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Easy.
Make the requirement that the qualifications are:
- Current.
- Used.
We have SMS and databases filed with data.
Time to put all this data to work.
So eg RCO…
The qual has to be in date on an F7257 on SMS.
AND
SMS would also have to show a logged shoot, where the individual was an RCO within say 6 months for it to be valid towards pay scale.
I would argue that this needs policy enforcement as if there are large numbers of people holding but not exercising quals they clearly aren’t maintaining currency or knowledge. Either they retrain, get checked or should relinquish them.
Following corps policy would solve that issue in most cases.
Else we make suitable policy to enforce that.
This sounds like a safety issue anyway!
there are also those who do so for SNCO promotion matrix - “obtained additional qualification” - you could argue this is the same thing.
getting the qualification to gain promotion and thus increased VA…
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Problem i forsee is that I genuinely want to do all these qualifications and I would love to ‘teach’ or assist in delivering all of them… its just finding enough hours in a day or days in a year!
Also regarding ‘Pay’ - I didn’t go into Uniform because of the pay, but seeing as the VA Daily Rate is more than a day (without flying) for me its more like pay than an allowance. 
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I suppose that we could solve the ‘has loads of quals but is useless/does very little’ issue by only promoting people who satisfy the requirement of being more than the base rank… Then, with only those people deserving holding higher ranks, we could make VA rank-based and the higher rates would reflect the commitment, responsibility, and qualification of those individuals.
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Perhaps a more equitable system could be:
Course director / Adult In Charge - top tier
Directing staff - basic tier
Participating staff (attending as students) lower tier
I’d extend that to CIs.
Then an annual bounty for uniformed staff, that could be based on rank.
But that would never fly as it would end up costing more than the current set up.
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Indeed.
Some dogs are best left to sleep.
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