Defense Department civilians to go on unpaid leave for 11 days

By Phil Stewart

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel will announce on Tuesday that most of the Defense Department's 800,000 civilian employees will be placed on unpaid leave for 11 days, as the military scrambles to comply with budget cutting targets by the end of September.

Hagel will announce the decision at a town hall meeting with Defense Department employees scheduled for 2:30 p.m. EDT (1630 GMT), U.S. defense officials told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The furlough is shorter than the earlier estimates of 14 days issued in March and 22 days in February, but is still going to be deeply unpopular with the Pentagon workforce. Officials have cautioned it could discourage civilians from joining the department, sending them instead to work in the private sector.

"He made this decision after carefully studying all of the options," said one U.S. defense official, adding that Hagel was not happy about the move but that it was necessary to comply with a belt-tightening law.

A second U.S. defense official, also speaking on condition of anonymity, said more than 600,000 employees would go on unpaid leave but could not say precisely how many. They would not start their leave for several weeks, the official added.

Defense spending has taken the single biggest hit from automatic spending cuts, known in Washington-speak as the "sequester," with a $46 billion reduction through the September 30 end of the current fiscal year.

The cuts - which will deepen in the coming years unless Congress acts to reverse them - were included in a 2011 law aimed at reducing the federal government's yawning deficits and controlling the national debt.

But top brass have warned Congress that the cuts will erode military readiness to respond in the future to global tensions, including over the civil war in Syria and Iran's nuclear advances, and as the United States winds down the 11-year-old war in Afghanistan.

The Pentagon slashed costs across the defense department before taking the extraordinary step to put civilian employees on unpaid leave, including cutting back training of troops and reducing the presence U.S. aircraft carriers in the Gulf region.

Hagel warned in a major policy speech last month last month that he had ordered a review that could lead to additional belt-tightening measures, like reducing the number of generals, paring back the civilian workforce and moving to stem spiraling costs of new weapons.

The Pentagon is also urging Congress to move forward with a new round of base closures. Closing domestic military is deeply unpopular with lawmakers due to the damage such cutbacks can cause in local economies.

(Reporting by Phil Stewart; Editing by Vicki Allen and Jackie Frank)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/pentagon-civilians-unpaid-leave-11-days-135934056.html

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