VFM is out!!!

[Cryos]

I don't know what your job is or your holiday allowance is but I have spent many years working in jobs that provided the statutory minimum which is currently 20 days. Now, you are not free to choose how those 20 days are spent. The companies I worked for tended to shut down at Christmas so 4 days of your holiday allowance had to be used then, there by leaving me with 16 days, also Good Friday is not a statutory holiday so that was another day of your allowance gone. That leaves 15 days to complete your reserve training and have holidays. So if you are only doing 1 week it is achievable leaving you with 2 weeks for the rest of the year. If you have to do a course that is 2 weeks then it puts a significant strain on your allocated leave. Then if you throw in family requirements puttng demands on those days.

If this wasnt in your Employment contract your entitled to keep your leave; Your annual leave is worked out as a % of your working time, if your employer didnt open on a friday for example the % time off would be allocated according to the 4 week. There are exceptions such as Client Holidays, if you work in outsourcing services and your company is working but a customer is not on a certain day, you have the option to take 1 day out of your annual leave, or you can sit in the office playing solitaire.

I have never had an issue taking 10 Days Leave during the year, but a recent addition to the Mr. and Mrs. Cryos family did put a strain on that; I had the option to do upto 21 days this year but took only 7 due to this fact.

Unfortunately people other than ourselfs do not have the luxury of this; There is many people who may only take 2 or 3 days off a week if they work in a small business due to Coverage issues. Employment protection in a sense would go some part of the way, business's that employ reservists could earn a VAT credit etc...

[DeV]

Truthfully I have no idea. But I would imagine that they do.

You imagine wrong, a retained firefighter has to get a document signed by their employer to say they release them AFAIK. It doesn't say that they have to keep their job for them.

Guy's if you look at the press release on the rte news website this is the second last paragraph in relation to the unpaid duties. http://www.rte.ie/news/2012/1120/sha...ing-by-50.html

The measures also recommend that further cost-savings be achieved by using reserves to carry out unpaid duties to assist members of the permanent defence forces. However these unpaid duties will not include armed operations.

That was in the VFM and press release.

If you thing of it there are some duties that are unarmed in barracks, some of which attract SDA (open to correction) even though unarmed.

[DeV]

Regarding employment protection RDFRA asked DOD/MA about it a number of years ago and were told its department of trade's baby...... But your not allow talk to them

[California Tanker]

What would employment protection give you that you haven't already?

What is more important is the question of what it gives the government that it doesn't already. The answer to that is the ability to have its soldiers train on the Army's schedule, not the schedules of thousands of individual employers.

Individual courses are more efficient as more students will be available to take it, and collective training will be more useful: A far better likelihood that a platoon in training may actually have the majority of the platoon show up.

[DeV]

Correct but also a smaller pool of people as they will be unemployable.

When I in my first 5 years or so of service I lost count of the number of times camp dates got changed and we got 3 days warning of a weekend.

[Big Al]

There are hundreds of posts on this site whinging about recognition of skills but as soon as a report comes out saying that skills should not only be recognised but actually utillised the whingers jump up objecting!!!

I object to the idea that the skill sets developed by members of the RDF outside of the DF sphere and possiblly at the personal cost of the RDF member could be utilised by the PDF free of charge.

If you are a Tech5 graded Sgt in the CIS corps (who would have extensive technical knowledge from their civi profession) shouldnt you receive a Sgt Tech5 wage while working along side the PDF.

Its a case of parity of esteem vs being treated like a doormat

[Saab]

Why not drive a bus for the DF? Because even though the DF has said they will they will recognise civvy skills you still need to do at least 3 driving courses before getting the bus driving course!

The recomendation was to use skills.
Not every one that had a DF bud licence has done every coiurse to get there. There is a lad in the medics that did a 1 week nissan course and was assessed then for minibus and Bus. I don't know if he had a truck assessment but I have seen him drive the midicoach. I am sure there are others like him around the country.

Any way Dev you know the point. You can't whinge today that you don't have x,y, z and then whinge tomorrow when you are told you can have it but must work for it!!!

[DeV]

Goal posts moving again then!

[GoneToTheCanner]

1: do not work for nothing, end of. The civil servants who dreamed that up would never surrender a second of their free time for nothing. Giving the State your time, work, effort, energy, sweat, family grief, loss of holidays,etc for nothing is a fool's game. Anecdotal evidence is that the PDF will take the absolute piss out of you, ie, give you shit jobs to save them having to do it, especially if you are stupid enough to do it for nothing.
2: see 1 above and consider joining the Civil defence or the Mountain rescue or the RNLI who will treat you with respect.

regards
GttC

[hptmurphy]

Having less holidays is one of the costs of being a reservist.

Which was acceptable when you were getting paid for it along with a gratuity.Eased the pain as such.

One weeks pay, no grat.

Lesson learned from the past, one weeks camp is less than useless.

If there are no planned activities around this FTT, as the units are now part of the PDF unit, 7 days FTT could be in fact translated into three 24hr duties over 7 days to include rest offs.

Once guys have carried out Annual Weapons Practice , no need to train them for anything else and use them as 'gap fillers during the summer etc'.

After all they have now been officially labelled as second class, why not use and abuse at their masters whim.

If anyone thought that VFM was about what could the RDF do to improve VFM, how wrong they were, it was what could be screwed out of the RDF to reduce the coats of the PDF as a whole.

In three years time their won't be an RDF, never mind a review.It even states the recruitment process shouldn't be viewed as a target!

[DeV]

Yes and no...... The thing about the recruitment target is 1 particular part only

[Docman]

Ok, the Grat is gone (and will never come back knowing the Govt we have).

A lot of us never did it for the money but the grat was supposed to cover expenses.

The Grat may be gone but we can now hardly be expected to sink our own money onto it.

1. The issue will have to increase to include all the kit we usually buy for ourselves using our grat.
2. Travel will have to be to a minimum - you cannot have a guy traveling from Abbeyfeale to Limerick weekly to attend 2hr training parades. I can understand traveling for weekends and FTT.

Transport will have to be laid on. I doubt transport will work given the distances and dispersion of Reservists and I doubt may PDF will want to do training nights without some allowance so I would propose that training nights be curtailed - it is not like a huge amount is achieved anyway.

[Goldie fish]

Never mind Abbeyfeale, what about the lads in Skibbereen? They are infantrymen, yet there is no longer an Infantry Bn in Cork. So they'll have to go to Limerick for weapons training. 4 Hours driving each way.

[apod]

Not an issue at the moment with B Coy 12 in Collins Bks.It really depends where F coy have their stores.

[DeV]

I'd say the 16 non-PDF posts have been kept to keep the TDs relatively happy, they are coy locations (their are no platoon locations).

Based on that my assumption would be there will be transport from coy locations to battalion locations for wpns training etc and from battalion locations to eg the range etc, and that will be it.

I would also say that the lack of grat (together with 50% of non-PDF locations closing and more travel) will greatly help with the "natural wastage".

I would suggest that Coys outside barracks will have cadre training sergeant and the coys in barracks will need to request PDF assistance when required.