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    Navy Rating Modernization: Lost by the NOS

    SOUTH CHINA SEA— Sailors aboard amphibious assault ship USS Bonhomme Richard (LHD 6) have reacted to the Navy’s latest “Rating Modernization” instruction with concerns for their past, present and future.

    As part of the Navy’s multi-year effort to transform the Enlisted Career Management processes, an initial set of changes were announced Sept. 29 to be immediately implemented across the entire Fleet. A short NAVADMIN, no more than a page-and-a-half in length, has affected the entire Navy enlisted community by ending the 241 year-old tradition of Navy rating titles. Instead, the instruction states that the “Navy will move from Rating Titles to alpha-numeric Navy Occupational Specialty (NOS) codes.” This is only the first step of the transformation.

    “Why does the Navy have to make this change to be comparable to the other services, like the Marines or Air Force? I do not know nor understand, just like many other Sailors who read the instruction,” said Airman Nefertiti Rasheed, who has been working in Bonhomme Richard’s personnel office for almost a year with the former hope of converting to Navy Legalman. “A lot of people are confused and don’t understand why we had to go through this change. It was what made the Navy different - we had a rate and a rank in the same title and we were the only branch that did that.”

    While the minds of Sailors from all NOSs are rightfully flooded with questions, many are looking for answers from those specialized in the Naval career development field. Although it would seem likely that administrative ratings would have been the first ones equipped with the necessary tools to brace for this impact, many of these Sailors were caught off guard as well.

    “When I first heard about it, I thought it was a joke,” said Bonhomme Richard Command Career Counselor Petty Officer 1st Class Tanisha Royal. “There’s no way the Navy could approve something like this and not let us know. We weren’t able to prepare for this at all. Of course, as the command career counselors, we’re supposed to be the SMEs (Subject Matter Experts). You would think the Navy would pull us to the side, and say ‘hey, we got this coming up; here’s some information. Prepare yourself with this because they’re going to come at you with questions.’ That did not happen at all.”

    What did happen took effect immediately. The “Rating Modernization” instruction has left many Sailors feeling disheartened and unheard by a service in which members are, in recent years, customarily presented with a variety of surveys on subjects ranging from the satisfaction of barracks housing to the quality of specialized trainings.

    “I feel that such drastic change would have been a great opportunity for a survey, opposed to a directive being put out. I have taken many surveys in my military career and I wish there was one for this change,” said Rasheed.

    As Rasheed explained, for about every present or forthcoming change in the Navy there is usually a survey. However, this time around it seemed that servicemembers were blindsided. Unlike the Navy’s recent release of plans for fleet-wide uniform changes, there was no warning or a date by which this change would take effect, but instead the instruction stated “effective immediately.”

    “While the change is immediate, there is no explanation about how we have to change paperwork, or how we process orders,” said Rasheed. “There is no explanation for how they will effectively make this change on personnel documents and records, yet we are expected to start calling a PS3 a Petty Officer 3rd Class.”

    Rasheed explained that while dealing with Sailors’ paperwork, especially their pay, the new title change has so far caused more strains than gains.

    “Instead of me sending BM3’s paperwork, I am trying to send over Petty Officer 3rd Class (PO3) paperwork, but his or her orders, NSIPS account and everything else still states BM3, which can cause confusion as PSD (Personnel Support Detachment) has civilians working with the paperwork,” said Rasheed. “So if civilian employees see a PO3 paperwork mixed with BM3 paperwork, they may believe we’ve made a mistake by sending in someone else’s documents, delaying the entire process. This can cause delays in pay, or purchase of plane tickets for travel on orders. So again, a civilian DTS (Defense Travel System) may question why they have BM3 orders but PO3 paperwork.”

    With a limited amount of information initially released by Naval leadership and a seeming lack of preparation for the change, Sailors have taken to heart the apparent absence of significant details or prepared answers for the inevitable questions concerning their careers.

    “They say you can get multiple NOSs, but they are categorized into different communities,” said Royal. “You know how admin is in admin and engineers are in engineering. So our educated guess would be that we could get multiple NOSs within our community, but not as widespread as people are thinking. I know that they’re saying that this will provide a better opportunity for us to relate and have civilians understand what we do more, but what I don’t get about this is it actually doesn’t make any sense to me by them saying that. Because if I walk up to a civilian and tell them that I’m a ‘B670,’ I’m just learning what that is- how will they know what that is?”

    Bonhomme Richard, flagship of the Bonhomme Richard Expeditionary Strike Group, is operating in the 7th Fleet area of operations in support of security and stability in the Indo-Asia Pacific region. The Bonhomme Richard ESG consists of USS Bonhomme Richard, USS Green Bay (LPD 20) and USS Germantown (LSD 42).

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    NEWS INFO

    Date Taken: 10.15.2016
    Date Posted: 01.31.2017 05:03
    Story ID: 221957
    Location: SASEBO, JP

    Web Views: 427
    Downloads: 0

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