So, farewell, Warrant Officer Twos ...

Well, after the ridiculous gesture of capping CPO tech-rates at level 7 whilst their B13nie counterparts glide up to level 9 (and are on the same wonga as Charges) thanks to Pay 2000 (the lamentable reasoning given by branch managers at the time was 'B13nies will never get to level 9 anyway') and then the stupidity of trying to 'purpleise' the branch structure by 'upgrading' the CCPO to Warrant Officer (Two - i.e. not invited to the Warrants' big shindig at Collingwood) apparently the mob has finally bitten the bullet and decided to scrap the WO2 rate entirely in what looks like a last ditch attempt to stem the outflow of personnel and allow ETs to reach WO1 (like they didn't even know this)

This has nothing to do with the fact that the rate itself became the dumping ground for any old shitty little task. It also ensured that another reasonless, pointless and thankless hurdle was put in the way of ambitious, talented and hardworking technicians who in many cases deserved the Tate and Lyles, but had to do their time in the lower, downgraded rate, hoovering up Officer of the Day duties aplenty, divisional duties, watchkeeping, subbing for DepCos and Senior departmental staffers and generally forming the spit-glue that bonds the department together. The mere fact that notice giving for all WO2s became an issue so grave that not even the recent 'sweetener' (which, when examined closely was nothing of the sort and simply fulfilled the depleting sea-roster for appointers) was good enough for people who had just simply had enough. And industry offers freedom of choice, no duties, no-one else's kids to look after and no sea time for equivalent spondoolies, even more if your pensh is counted in. Then of course, there's compensating for the so-far unsuccessful transition to Engineering Techncian, which has seen the WEs and MEs stripped of its horsepower at LH through to CPO level.

So now its 'fast track' to the top. A craven admission that since 2004, the engineering branch managers simply got it wrong, and saw off bunch of people who either stuck it out in misery, or pissed off outside. Be nice to see if there are any sample cases of people having left taking the mob to task for retrospective wage, pensh and gratuity loss.

Don't get me wrong. I am glad they have done this and glad some sense has come about because of it, even if it smacks of desperation. But its a **** up of phenomenal quantities, and one which should not go unanswered.

levers

 

And that sums up in a nut shell why I was just not interested in being a Charge Chief (as was) for all of an extra 50p a day or whatever at the time.


I don't think I was the only one........

 

I was the same as you S-B. I was hacked off at being capped when at Level 7, the CCPO's job was shite and went out on the same pensh as a CPO so I stayed where I was as a happy little wrecker. It got so bad for CCPO's/WO2's that, in the ME world on boats at least, if you dual-qualified (L & M watchkeeping positions) you didn't get selected for Charge course, you were drafted so I never dual qualified as did many others I know of.

Even when they made WO2 a substantive rate the pensh increase was pathetically small and the WO2 pay was till the two higher levels that CPO's got capped at.

Maybe if I hadn't done Mechs course and then got converted to tiff I might have made it to WO1. That made 2 1/2 years at Sultan worthwhile :roll:

 

Missed that one at work today Levers. Was it an RNTM?

 

Is this really the case, it's quite how I had it explained. Will check with my WB sneak and see what results...

 

I can't answer for the majority of your post but this stands out for me as being wholly true across the entire branch, Ratings and Officers, and despite what might or might not be occurring I think we'll still get it wrong..and in spades

 

Sorry I have what may be a stupid question as have been outside a while. If what Levers has said is true, who will carry out what was the Charge Chief/WO2 role now? Some mug selected by the HOD, a young thruster trying to impress and gain points?

 

Rab, if WO2 does go they'll re-invent the wheel as in Tiff3, tiff2, tiff1 and Chief tiff although they'll be called ET's, just my un-informed opinion.

 

Wrecker cheers for that, back to the days of the WEs avoiding promotion to CPO so they cant be pinged for Charge. I guess thats all changed under ETs anyway.

 

Not yet as such. The ink has yet to dry. And true to form, they'll release a TM to make it so, cause a furore because it marginalises one specific tranche, fast-twitch a fix, **** it up for another section of the affected and end up suspending it while they go back to the drawing board.

They had enough snags in the past with 'ET' as such, aligning skillsets with the now-practically worthless Foundation Degree (i.e it isn't a 'Degree' at all, least of all one you can initialise after your name) which is generally being valued at low by recruiters into civilian industry (particualrly 'ME' generated). The rigmaroule involved in achieveing FD status was laughable to say the least (I sat in on many of the meetings) and it was clear that the desperation to ensnare engineers into a structure that made them believe they were getting something of worth for the return of service was thick in the air. Then there was the 'what are we going to do with Charge Chiefs/SMRs?' That initiative deserves as much scorn as possible because for so much promised, so little was generated. And it left a huge, huge gap in capability between CPO and WO2 whereas before, many CPOs could cover for absent CCPOs (I did on many occasions) without too much fuss and strain.

The engineering branches are a right mess, aren't they?

levers

 

After Mechs, I did my sums, 3 years of brown nosing to get charge, or longer? Followed by another point collecting game for WO, that felt like far too much crap to take for finically little gain, so I enjoyed life as a Sonar Bending Fwd Tech and did an OU degree. Nice to know after all these years the ********** at the top never listen, when we went to user maintainers the septic’s said it did not work and were going back to operators and maintainers, but good old RN said they would make it work?

 

I do have a question, why so much f'ing around with the engineering branches, there was a working system EM's and EA's so why were the adults ever allowed to mess up the system. Did it really all stem from a dabber led dislike of the SR top heavy system we had?

 

Rab, I was a training officer on the last Fisgard Sqn tiff divisions to go through Raleigh on the 10 week course, before everyone went to 8 weeks in summer 2004. The writing was on the wall even then - basically tiffs were too expensive full stop, so the great command comes down from on high that "all shall be ETs, and we'll fast track the ones we want from within."

If even a dabber SLt like me could translate that as "there's no cash so we're going to de-enrich and polish it to look like an improvement" then it must have been written in giant flashing f***** neon letters for anyone actually within the branches affected. It certainly was for the 2 WO1 MEAs and the CWEA I was working with.

 

This came about because there was some sort of push firstly, to didtch the 'all of one company' pay system which sometimes saw senior killicks paid more than junior POs (and was ******* expensive anyway, pound for pound) and then the genuis movement in the early zeroes to slide the RAF Techs, Army Tiffs and Matelot Tiffs on top of each other, work out what was common training and skills, ditch the current centres of excellence and build a ******* great big monsterous site at St Athan and call it a result. On examination, the training amounted to a fuckload of static stuff for the RAF, loads of REME/RE vehicle tech stuff for the Army and ... ooh, what? The Royal Navy? erm ... over there, in that corner. Oh and the 'commonality' between forces of training? 15%, the first time round we tried - a further 8% when we went back and had another look with rose-tinted specs on. It wasn't the philosophy of engineering that was the issue. It was the 'level of accepatble skill'. You can't 'normalise' a qualified nuclear welder with a REME VT whose remit is to blob it up and get it home.

I saw the plans and heard the (lack of) ambitions. It was like we were given a bland afterthought - we could make do with common electrical and diesel training and computer emulations would see to the rest. See Type 45 training now, in fact. You haven't seen it? Its garbage, produced by happy clappers, bought into the dreamworld that you can forge engineers by giving them playstations. IN with that came the notioon that some of these skills might just be 'transferrable' - if we unitise the rate structure, mebbes we could have Army Tiffs doing Navy Tiffs jobs, eh? I know. I shuddered, as well. To do that was tricky being as we had this vague, unsubstantiated 'rate' between Staffy and Warrant Two which was two-odd quid a day (gross) extra and didn't attract much kudos outside the Combined Tech Office. So they came up with the great idea to Warrantise the rate, but not too much, eh. As a notion, it was a complete failure. It separated the Chiefs from the new rate, caused consternation and made the WO2 a new, vastly over subscribed target.

Then there was the ridding of the 'stokers' and 'pinkies/oilies'. Overnight (or on 'vesting day') former POMies/POWEMs became ETs, cross threaded to become 'Section Heads', Killicks became LETs (or 'Deputy Section Heads') but failed to attract the kudos Corporals have and Chiefs were suddenly bestowed with 'Group Head' status, spanning whole section areas, mostly with no PJT/ADQUAL/Career Course to underpin and in many cases, more senior chiefs working for them because the POET roster was bone dry or people were failing courses.

Its taken years to flatten this shit out and meanwhile, disgruntled, disillusioned and time-served skilled technicians have pressed the ejector seat button in their droves.

You couldn't make it up.

levers

 

Levers and Kinross Special cheers for the coal face reports. So yet again pusser will dilute its technical expertise, fine when its an exercise fuse thats defective on a Thursday war.....................

 

Hands up all those that remember the OM saga? That wasn't just pushed through, it was driven through in a tank.


' course it will work - and save money.

 

<Raises hand>

 

+1
And the rest to make the numbers for a post

 

I go back a little further, to the Weapons Mech saga. It caused a lot of aggro both at Whaley and on ships.

 

Yes, particularly ours, I think. The whole ET thing was a classic step of taking things too far and trying to fix what wasn't really broke, just needed a bit of fine tuning. It all came across as trying to shaft tiffs.