It’s 2022, and for the second year in a row, the Navy is late on my bonus payment. This isn’t even the first pay issue I’ve had this year.
I took the five-year early-commit bonus back in 2020, and October is my anniversary month. I received my first bonus direct deposited in my account in October 2020. Between COVID-19-related delays, staff teleworking, and any number of other issues, October 2021 came and went without a bonus payment.
The detailer is listed in the contract as the first point of contact, so I emailed them at the bureau. I wasn’t overly concerned, so I included a joke about a “jelly-of-the-month club” as my bonus for the year. I thought it was a pretty good joke, with all due respect to Chevy Chase.
The bonus finally arrived in April 2022, six months late.
Between May and June, a DFAS error reset flight pay for hundreds of Naval officers who had hit their administrative milestones, and—once again—my paycheck was light. The same issue in July made me wonder more about what was happening, but then someone pointed out that MyNavyHR had a note about how this was a known issue, and it was being addressed.
The correct flight pay with back pay was deposited with my second July paycheck. Okay, maybe it’s all fixed. Nope, the August paycheck was light, too. I contacted the Bureau again, a different desk, and was assured that this issue, while maybe connected to the previous issue, would be corrected by September.
At the same time, my squadron Admin shop initiated a Salesforce trouble ticket through Wing Admin. The ticket was closed within 20 minutes of opening it with a “nothing we can do, that’s someone else’s issue,” or words to that effect.
At this point, no bonus appeared in October 2022, and there is a banner at the top of the Aviation Bonus page on MyNavyHR, dated 28 APR 2022, that directs that they are not to be contacted until the bonus payment is over 45 days late. I guess this means that I would not be able to make any inquiries until we are into the holiday leave period in December, likely with similar results to the Salesforce ticket. I would not dream of skipping work for 45 days, and if I did, someone would probably contact me during that time even if I put a banner up on my website saying not to.
Lest you think this is just a lonely complaining session from one officer, I have a colleague who was finally able to pin on O-4 around a year late, due to COVID-19-related delays and supply-chain issues and has yet to receive twelve months of back pay, or another colleague who has a recent corrected pay mistake from 18 years ago! This doesn’t even cover my buddy who retired last summer and now spends most of his free time trying to help the pay system take back some money he was mistakenly given before they garnish his wages for his “indebtedness” to the Navy.
Imagine if I walked into your kitchen, dropped thousands of dollars on the floor, walked out without saying anything, ignored your calls, or closed out all your trouble tickets within minutes, then tried to garnish your wages thorough an involuntary allotment for your indebtedness to me.
I joined the Navy during the War on Terror with a healthy dose of patriotism, and even though I know the Navy will never love me back, I still love what I do and being a part of this organization. It is disheartening to see these issues crop up over and over again, and I’m doing all right financially. I’ll make it work. The sailors the Navy is supposed to be working for are surely struggling worse than I, and that should bother our leaders enough to make immediate changes, not just quick ones.
The longer pay issues exist, the more talent will slip out the door to organizations that actually pay their people on time. On-time pay should not be a discriminator between military service or civilian employment. This is embarrassing.
Furthermore, bonuses and backpay paid in the next calendar year could have implications for service members’ taxes, pushing them into a higher tax bracket and increasing their tax burden through no fault of their own. With inflation hitting 40-year highs, missing pay only makes a difficult environment more stressful. If you didn’t get a pay increase this year that tracks with inflation, you took a pay cut—if you get paid on time at all.
