Since you're in the Montgomery area, I assume you work on Maxwell/Gunter AFB. Which contractor are you working for, what do you do on the contract.....and how big is the contract (how many people on the contract....is it a large contract, or a smaller contract)?
If it's a requied service/job that the Air Force sees a need for, those jobs WILL be filled one way or another.
I work contract myself on Eglin AFB in the Florida panhandle (about a 3 hour drive from you) and I've seen this before. There is a trend in the Air Force to do away with contracts and contractors.
For example, they used to contract out the grass cutting on base....then last January, they up and cancelled the contract without notice. A whole bunch of people out of work. Within a couple weeks of that going public, they were advertising for Civil Service positions on Jobs Plus starting at around $18.00 an hour (more than the guys on the contract were getting) to replace all of the people that just lost their jobs on the contract. They advertised the jobs as equipment operators, and when you read the job description, it was operating lawn mowers, push, ride and tractor.
They've reverted a whole bunch of current contract employees to government GS and WG positions recently too. They even have a name for it. Contract Employee to Government Employee Conversion Program....or some such thing it's called.
They're doing it more and more.
The moral to the story is......the Government aint' goin' without it's services.....contract or no. They still have a job to get done and they're going to have someone in some compacity to fill it....whether it's via a contract or direct hire via Civil Service.
Whether they finally eliminate most all of the contracts on base is yet to be seen, but they ARE doing away with most, if not all of the smaller contracts......that is a fact. Time will tell if they go after the larger contracts or not.
The thing is....and no one in government will admit this....but contracts actually cost the government more money than just having Civil Service do the job in the first place. Regardless of the official line from anyone in government, contracts actually cost more. What contracts do is eliminate the adminstrative headache and responsiblities for the labor from the government and transfers that headache to the contractor. Contracts have more people on them than if the government just did it themselves......there's a whole 'nother level of management and HR people that the government already has in place. There is tremendouse duplication of services when something goes contract in the military. No one in government will admit it, but the reason things go contract is not to save money, but to eliminate the administrative headache of having to administer all of us little people so that they can concentrate on their "core" people and "core" mission without having to deal with us....the labor. That's why things go contract.....it's never about saving money no matter what anyone in the government says.
The economy is a bitch and everybody is broke....including the government. They've been being mandated for several years now from the now ex-secretary of the Air Force Robert Gates that they've got to cut back hell or high water. One way to do that is to cut out the contracts and revert those jobs back to Civil Service. I see it happening here a little at a time, but it is happening.
I don't know if you feel like moving (you actually could commute....we've got a couple guys that live in South Alabama that drive here every day), but we've got an opening where I work (actually three). They're starter positions paying about $14 an hour. One is in our refrigeration shop (where I work, shift work is required unfortunetly), one in the Electric Shop and one in our T/A shop (it's more of a general jack of all tades kinda shop where you might be wrenching on something one day, driving a fork lift the next, painting something the next....they do alot of test set-up and test tear-down).
We're a cllimatic testing facility and do environment testing for the DOD and any civilian custormers that come our way. Everything from tents, trucks and tanks to helicopters, fighter jets and cargo planes to icing tests on jet engines on a test stand.
If your interested.......
https://www.indyneinc.com/employment/Employment/tabid/54/PageID/1/PositionID/632/btnClick/btnDetail/Default.aspxThat listing is actually for three positions. They just listed it as one.
This is what we do.....
This is where we are....
Sometimes I get to do alot of this (we operate industrial refrigeration equipment from a control room)....
And you might even get to work with this happy guy....
PM me if you need any help.
