An extra $6,460. That’s how much Gerald L. Weir Jr., a housekeeping supervisor at Spangdahlem Air Base’s Eifel Arms Inn, would have gotten last year in post allowance if he’d worked at a similar inn run by the U.S. Army.
The disparity — widely viewed as unfair — is codified in Army and Air Force policy manuals. The Army’s says pay it; the Air Force’s manual says don’t.
It is a simple fact of life that the Air Force’s overseas hires have accepted grudgingly — and needlessly — for more than a decade.
According to the Defense Department, the Air Force and some other military organizations with nonappropriated fund employees have not been following the DOD guidance on paying post allowance to U.S. citizens hired abroad.
A DOD policy implemented in 1995 “requires payment of overseas allowances and differentials to NAF employeees,” according to Lt. Col. Les’ A. Melnyk, a Defense Department spokesman.
This wasn’t really news to Weir’s boss, Michael Dean.
Dean has argued for some time that the Air Force should be paying the allowance — a supplement given to qualifying American employees in order to offset the high cost of living in some overseas areas — to him an other so-called “local hires.”
Dean went so far as to write his congressman, Rep. Jeff Miller, R.-Fla., and was told in January that the DOD’s civilian personnel management service questioned the “legal accuracy” of the Air Force’s policy in May 2006.
The Defense Department did not know the services had different post allowance policies until “recently,” according to Melnyk.
Other nonappropriated fund employers might also be in violation of the department’s policy, but it wasn’t known by deadline just which organizations.
Other than the Army and Air Force, the Navy and the Marines — which share policies — are the biggest NAF employers. A Navy spokesman in Italy couldn’t confirm whether the Navy paid post allowance to its local hires. A Navy spokeswoman at the Pentagon didn’t respond to queries.
Regardless, the discovery is certain to mean thousands of dollars more a year for at least dozens, if not hundreds or even thousands, of overseas employees.
Stars and Stripes was unable to determine how many employees would potentially be affected. The U.S. military had more than 130,000 nonappropriated fund employees as of December, according to the Pentagon, but it’s unclear how many are overseas.
Also unknown is when the eligible employees will start to get post allowance.
“Extensive legal and policy discussions” involving the Air Force, the Defense Department, the Office of Personnel Management, the State Department and other nonappropriated fund employers are ongoing, according to Capt. Thomas Wenz, an Air Force spokesman at the Pentagon.
The discussions won’t stop at determining when the Air Force and others will start paying post allowance. The DOD also is reviewing whether these employees are owed back pay for years’ worth of unpaid allowances, according to Melnyk. It could mean a windfall of tens of thousands of dollars for some employees.
“The review is expected to last for several months to ensure a thorough analysis and appropriate coordination,” Melnyk wrote.
The Defense Department’s policy requires that all services treat employees hired overseas for nonappropriated fund positions the same way they treat their appropriated fund employees, according to Melnyk. With few exceptions, full-time U.S. civilian employees are automatically entitled to the allowance, according to the policy.
All the services rely on the policy as the basis for their individual regulations. It appears the disparity came about because each service interpreted the DOD guidance differently.
The Air Force and some other organizations “relied in good faith on their interpretation that post allowance was not required to be paid (to U.S. citizens hired abroad for nonappropriated fund positions) … and that the NAF pay-setting procedures were already sufficient to compensate for the cost of living,” Wenz wrote in response to Stars and Stripes.
Weir contends that the roughly $23,300 he makes a year is barely enough to scrape by, but that isn’t really the point.
“I am not asking for a favor. I am asking what I am entitled to by law,” he said.
