URGENT ACTION REQUIRED!

The Ball is in Our Court

 

 

 

Your help is needed! Contact your representative ASAP and ask them to sign on to this important piece of legislation. You can find a copy of this bill by clicking on the hyperlink below {National Guard Technician Recruitment and Retention Act (H.R. 6438)}. Time for action is NOW. Lets take a 'NIKE' attitude — "DO IT".

 

Read the 'Dear Colleague' letter and article below before you call and write (e-mail). If you do not know who you Representative is or need an address (e-mail) and phone number go to the 'ACT Home' page click on 'Legislation' and then click 'Contact Congress' and follow the directions.

 

If you have any questions please contact Jgoulait@actnat.com or your Regional Vice President. Keep us in the loop and let us know what your Representative plans to do. When you get in the door, let us know and we will visit their offices to help push this.

 

 

 

*****

 

Restore Fairness For Our National Guard Military Technicians

 

Cosponsor National Guard Technician Recruitment and Retention Act (H.R. 6438)

Supported by the Enlisted Association of the National Guard (EANGUS)

and the Association of Civilian Technicians (ACT)

Dear Colleague:

 

If the National Guard serves as the backbone of our military, then our military technicians serve as the backbone of our National Guard. All across the country, military technicians play a critical role in ensuring that our National Guard is ready to respond and deploy in support of military operations abroad by supporting the training, equipment repair and restoration, logistics and other critical functions.

 

Military technicians are known as “dual-status” employees, through which they must retain membership in the Air or Army National Guard in their State in order to maintain full-time employment as a technician.   However, current law specifically prohibits them from receiving benefits available to them as members of the National Guard, such as re-enlistment bonuses and student loan repayment assistance.  In addition, if a Guardsman becomes a technician within six months of receiving an enlistment or reenlistment bonus, they are required to pay them back.

 

The law also requires military technicians to receive compensatory time, rather than monetary compensation, in return for overtime work.  However, many technicians cannot use the compensatory time without impacting time-sensitive military work schedules and, with the military’s current “use it or lose it” policy under which such time is lost if unused within 21 pay cycles, many technicians face the prospect of losing the time off they have earned. 

 

Last week, I introduced the National Guard Technician Recruitment and Retention Act (H.R. 6438), which ensures that no military technician is denied the opportunity to receive an enlistment or reenlistment bonus for their service in the National Guard, that they are given the opportunity to participate in a student loan repayment program and are not required to repay bonuses they receive for their service in the National Guard if they accept a position as a military technician.  In addition, the bill will repeal the overtime prohibition and instead allow flexibility in overtime compensation by allowing military technicians to chose between compensatory time or overtime pay at one and a half times their basic rate of pay – whatever suits their individual situation and needs.

 

H.R. 6348 has received the strong support of the Enlisted Association of the National Guard (EANGUS) and the Association of Civilian Technicians (ACT), which represents military technicians in 40 states.  With all we ask of them today, I simply disagree with the notion that a member of the National Guard has to give up the benefits they are entitled to because they chose to serve their nation as a military technician.  Military technicians are the ones that keep the National Guard ready to serve – and it is time that we serve them. 

 

I hope you will join me in supporting this important legislation.  Please contact my Senior Legislative Assistant, Neil McKiernan, at 5-2076 or Neil.McKiernan@mail.house.gov with any questions or to sign on.

 

                                                                                                Sincerely,

                                                                                                /S/

                                                                                                JOE COURTNEY      

                                                                                                Member of Congress

 

Our view: Guardsmen deserve equal pay, treatment

Norwich Bulletin, Jul 05, 2008

 

Despite how anyone feels about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, we all are in agreement the men and women in uniform there deserve our full support. And yet, we find it is our own government that more often falls short in supporting the troops.

U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney, D-2nd District, this week introduced legislation to correct a law that treats some members of the National Guard unfairly. Those members who are classified as “dual-status” are not entitled to the same benefits as others who serve alongside them.

A “dual-status” member is a civilian employee required to retain membership in the Guard in order to keep his or her civilian job with the military. These people are military technicians and, under the Technician Act of 1969, are not eligible to receive re-enlistment bonuses. Additionally, if a Guard member re-enlists and receives a bonus, but then becomes a military technician within six months of that re-enlistment, the Defense Department requires them to repay that bonus.

Recently, 150 members of the Connecticut National Guard’s Groton-based 1109th AVCRAD unit were deployed to Kuwait, Iraq and Afghanistan. It’s the unit’s second deployment, having first been called up at the beginning of the Iraq War in 2003. It is a highly specialized unit — one of only four in the country — that provide the maintenance and logistical support for the Army’s military aircraft and equipment in 14 states across the Northeast, including Connecticut’s Black Hawk helicopter fleet.

In the four years since their return from that initial deployment, many members of that unit saw their enlistment expire. Knowing they likely would be deployed again, they could have opted out of the Guard. But many didn’t. They re-enlisted.

Of the 150 members of that unit now making their second deployment, 100 of them are military technicians — and not entitled to receive the same re-enlistment benefit enjoyed by the other 50 members serving with them in a war zone.

That’s wrong. As Courtney noted this week, “those who serve in the military are owed our many thanks and appreciation — and fairness in compensation.”

Courtney’s legislation will correct that unfairness and we fully support quick passage of the bill.