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Looming federal budget cuts expected to bring 20% pay cuts to hundreds of National Guard employees
Posted at: 02/28/2013 5:49 PM
| Updated at: 02/28/2013 6:03 PM
By: Bill Lambdin
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LATHAM - About half of the area employees facing an unpaid furlough work at the Division's headquarters in Latham.
Most of the rest are at Stratton base in Scotia.
The Department of Defense expects to save 10 million dollars over six months by cutting back the work load.
Spokesman Colonel Richard Goldenberg is one of those who would lose a day's work and a day's pay each week. "Across the state of New York, from Long Island all the way to Buffalo-Niagara Falls, it's about 1800 civilian employees of the New York National Guard," Goldenberg said. "These are federal technicians, folks you see in uniform on a day to day basis. We work in all variety of job sets for the National Guard, whether it is administration, maintenance, operations and training."
It would take about 30 day to make the official notifications, so actual pay and work wouldn't start being lost until April.
The Budget Control Act also will show up in reductions of many Guard programs and services.
"By reducing our staff one day a week there will be less work done," Goldenberg said. "We like to say we do more with less. At some point you do less with less. So things like maintenance on our vehicles and equipment will either be deferred or delayed until we have the manning and people in place to do that type of work. Flying hours will be reduced because they're very expensive to operate our military aircraft."
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