Stephen DeAngelis has some interesting reflections on the large number of civilian contractors, both American and foreign national, performing support services for the U.S. military that were not so long ago performed by enlisted soldiers. While most of us focus on the relative unaccountability of the contractors as compared with uniformed personnel, there’s another difference: The lack of benefits.
He cites a recent John Broder piece.
The consequences of the war will be lasting for many of them and their families, ordeals that are largely invisible to most Americans. And they will be costly. The most grievously injured, like Mrs. Khan, are initially treated at military hospitals in Iraq and Europe, then sent home and left to the mercies of their employer’s insurance carrier. The less critically hurt, and those with psychic wounds, must fend for themselves to get care.
Nobody makes the private workers go to Iraq or forces them to stay, of course; the high salaries some collect lead critics to dismiss them as mercenaries and their employers as profiteers. But many more contractors, like Mrs. Khan, earn relatively modest wages — far less than the $100,000 the Army says an enlisted soldier costs annually in pay, benefits and training — and some foreign workers who perform some of the most dangerous tasks are paid just dollars a day. After a decade of downsizing and outsourcing, the American military cannot wage war without them.
[…]
Some Americans shrug about the casualties among contractors, saying they made their money and they took their chances. Others, though, think the nation owes them something more. “We should honor their sacrifices and those of their families,” said Frank Camm, a Rand Corporation economist who has studied contracting and is the son of a retired Army lieutenant general. “They’re not in uniform, and there is something special about being in uniform. But they deserve a hell of a lot more than we’re giving them.”
I’m not so sure. People who undertake risky work are owed what they were promised when they signed on. It’s unclear why they should get “a hell of a lot more.”
DeAngelis argues that, “If the U.S. is going to rely on contractors for both front and back half activities, then a permanent solution to long-term healthcare for those injured and just compensation to the families of those killed should be put in place.” Only, it seems to me, if people aren’t signing up in droves to take the jobs.
It’s true that we provide for the long-term disability of American soldiers wounded in combat. But that was part of our contract with them. Further, we’re paying them far less on the front end than we do contractors at comparable skill levels. We pay cooks, truck drivers, laundry washers, and the like going into war zone far, far more than they’d ordinarily make precisely because of the added danger they face.
