Corps loosens up-or-out policy for enlisted Marines

[rangerrebew]

Corps loosens up-or-out policy for enlisted Marines
By Irene Loewenson
 Jun 26, 11:20 PM

 

The administrative message also announced that the maximum age that enlisted Marines can be before they must retire would be increased. (Lance Cpl. Tyler Raab/Marine Corps)
The Corps now will let some enlisted Marines who have twice been passed over for promotion stay in the service, in a bid to boost retention.

The relaxation of the up-or-out policy, as the forcing out of troops who twice miss out on promotions is sometimes called, comes as Corps leadership is working to keep more experienced Marines in the service.


Effective July 1, the Marine Corps will start approving reenlistments and extensions for some enlisted Marines who twice don’t get promoted, the service announced in an administrative message June 16.

Up-or-out policies are designed to “encourage good performance, increase promotion opportunities, lower the average age of the service corps, and build a culture that defines success by promotion,” according to a 2005 Rand report.

https://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/your-marine-corps/2023/06/27/corps-loosens-up-or-out-policy-for-enlisted-marines/

[Timber Rattler]

It was always a stupid policy.  Now the Corps is dealing with that self-inflicted retention wound.

[Maj. Bill Martin]

It was always a stupid policy.  Now the Corps is dealing with that self-inflicted retention wound.

Yes and no.  Up or out does have the effect of making more slots for promotion available.  Fewer available promotion slots would mean younger Marines will have to wait longer to be promoted, and that may hurt retention of some of your best people.

Cuts both ways.

[Timber Rattler]

Yes and no.  Up or out does have the effect of making more slots for promotion available.  Fewer available promotion slots would mean younger Marines will have to wait longer to be promoted, and that may hurt retention of some of your best people.

Cuts both ways.

Yeah, I get what you're saying.  Ultimately, the U.S. military still uses the same personnel management system leftover from World War II.  It might have worked back then but it's broken now, and Congress has done nothing to fix it.  I know several extremely competent (and embittered) veterans who got screwed by that system in general, and the Office of Personnel Management in particular, which cared only for available billets and not the capable service people who filled them, or could fill them.  There should have been some system in place decades ago to retain those who demonstrated excellence in their MOS and wanted to stay in service, instead of ruthlessly kicking them to the curb due to sheer numbers and "up or out."  There has to be a better way of managing the military "workforce."

[PeteS in CA]

This policy traces back to the late 1800s and to officers, when the USN realized that its existing promotion-by-seniority practice and budgetary limits resulted in officers reaching command rank when their capability to satisfy the demands thereof were diminished, and those older officers limited advancement opportunities for younger officers (Trent Hone goes into this protracted debate and change process in Learning War, one of my current reads). Advance-or-retire policies have evolved through the decades, and should be adjusted to fit the services' needs.

[rangerrebew]

When you throw in gender and race quotas, the whole thing is a real mess.  Those quotas may not be written but to accomplish wokeness, they have to be practiced in reality.

[PeteS in CA]

I realize that I grew up in a different century than did late 19th Century naval higher-ups and Congress-critters who defended the promotion-by-seniority system from promotion by experience and competence, but their resistance seems bizarre to me. In the 1890s, the USN was pretty much a 5th-rate navy (Britain, France, Russia, and probably Germany were probably greater, at that time). The USN was "lucky" - in men and materiel - that the Spanish navy it fought in 1898 had never recovered nor caught up from Trafalgar and its decline in the 18th Century.