Boston, MA 05/15/2013 (wallstreetpr) – The US Defense Secretary, Chuck Hagel, announced that furloughs or unpaid leave would be imposed on 680,000 Pentagon workers for 11 days – at one day per week beginning from July, 08. The government had however managed to reduce the furloughs from the previous estimates of 22 days which was later estimated as 14 days after the stop gap funding.
Regrets Expressed
The Defense Secretary expressed deep regrets to the employees for having to impose such furloughs which were initiated in response to the Federal budget cuts. The furloughs would result in reduced expenditure of about $1.8 billion to the budget. The Pentagon officials will have to manage to bring down their expenditures by $37 billion for this fiscal year ending in September.
Exemptions
To ensure that the maintenance works in nuclear vessels which are critical to the mission’s success, the Pentagon had decided not to impose furloughs on 28,000 civilian workers in the Navy shipyards. Further exemptions include employees involved in intelligence and sales of foreign arms. Also 50000 employees at overseas locations are exempted from the furloughs as their payments are covered by the foreign countries under the agreements signed with US.
Stopgap funding
The reduction in number of furlough days from 14 to 11 was made possible through stop gap funding provided by the federal government to various departments. The Pentagon was lucky enough to win more flexibility in this stop gap funding through the inclusion of full appropriation measures.
