The issue is particularly acute for large centers such as Robins Air Force Base where some 15,000 civilians make up the majority of the work force.
The initiative gained momentum in 2005 when the Base Realignment and Closure Commission recommended consolidation of certain “transactional” civilian personnel duties, although the BRAC team failed to offer much detail and clarity.
Air Force officials used the ruling to declare virtually all personnel functions “transactional” and planned to shift the workload out of the large civilian centers to Air Force Personnel Center in San Antonio, Texas. That’s when Mike O’Hara, Robins’ civilian personnel director at the time, began to object loudly and publicly.
O’Hara, a veteran personnelist, said shifting responsibility for such key functions as classification, staffing, recruiting, hiring and labor relations to a distant location would “rob Robins and other large civilian centers of overall efficiency and the ability to rescope and reshape the workforce to meet new and changing missions.”
The warning caught the ear of U.S. Rep. Jim Marshall, D-GA, who threatened the Air Force with an amendment preventing wholesale consolidation unless a compromise could be reached.
What Air Force intends to implement apparently will bring life to that compromise and possible closure to a long-simmering debate. The first location will open April 1 at Tinker Air Force Base, Okla., and at the Air Force District of Washington July 1. Robins, Hill Air Force Base, Utah, and Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, will follow in 2011.
From 72 to 80 people currently working in the Warner Robins Air Logistics Center’s civilian personnel office will transition in place to AFPC operational control and, according to AFPC spokesman, Kenny Pruitt, continue to “seamlessly produce job referral lists, extend job offers, perform in-processing for new employees and provide staffing advice to managers.”
Marshall spokesman Doug Moore said the congressman has participated fully in the process and believes the on-site transition will protect the interests of the center commanders.
“Some 80 people will be doing the same things they’ve been doing at the same location only for a different boss,” Moore said Monday. “They will continue to have that close connection with the center and be able to meet local needs as they arise.”
Mary Larralde, Robins’ director of civilian personnel, said the transitioned workers would remain “integrated and fully engaged” with the local personnel office.
“The people will remain in place,” Larralde is quoted in a base newspaper article last Friday. “Their jobs will not change. They will simply have a different reporting official.”
Pruitt underscored the points raised by Larralde.
“Each operating location will collaborate with the center’s director of personnel on mission workload and priorities to ensure local missions are accomplished,” he wrote in an e-mailed response to query. “The center commander will also have input into the evaluation of the leadership in meeting performance objectives.”
A major concern of O’Hara’s and others has been AFPC’s track record in the timely filling of positions. The San Antonio agency has had trouble in the past with a backlog that grew from 5,037 in December 2006 to about 9,500 in April of 2008. The centers, operating with their own personnel teams, were much more efficient.
Moore said Marshall was concerned about that as well. “We will be keeping a close eye on how this develops,” Moore said. “Obviously we expect the operating locations to have the same efficiency as they did when the people were assigned to the centers.”
O’Hara, now retired from his Robins job, is at best skeptical of the new alignment, calling the personnel transactions being assumed by the operating location the “life blood of the center.”
“This does not portend well for Robins or the other large civilian centers,” he said. “I continue to worry about the long term future of Robins and most pointedly the hard working Middle Georgians who depend on her for a living. Without a nimble, world class organization to provide the skilled hands needed to sustain the mission, her capabilities will shrink during a most worrisome time.”
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