[Image idea is the three source rating badges arranged as we do petty officer advancements -- BU, EA and SW]
Navy officials are adding a new rate to the career path of roughly 2,600 Seabee sailors.
Effective Jan. 20, the three ratings, — builder, engineering aide and steelworker — Navy officials will now neck down? into the "compression rating" starting at the E-8 level, creating the rate of senior chief constructionman rate.
It's the end of senior chief builders, engineering aides and steelworkers; those who are already senior chiefs in those rates automatically become senior chief constructionmen.
In the Navy, career fields are called ratings while individual pay grades within each ratings are "rates." In this case, constructionman is the rating and senior chief constructionman is a rate.
Compression ratings aren’t new to the Navy — the service has had many since the master chief paygrade was created in 1958. Currently t Therethey’re are five at the moment:.Tthree in the Seabees and the other two are in the aviation community.
Insignia for senior petty officer, E8.
Photo Credit: File
But tThe creation of CUCS is the first ever compression rate at E-8 ever approved by the Navy. At E-9, there are there’s already 20 billets Navy-wide. The newly combined E-8 rate will include roughly 75 billets that exists across the three source ratingsratings. Currently t There arethere's no new billets being created; . T the new rate will apply for both the active and selected reserve.
"We did an extensive review of advancement opportunity, career paths and assignments in each rating at the E-8 level," said Force Master Chief (SCW/MTS) Christopher Leavesque, the Seabees top enlisted sailor, in a Dec. 17 interview. "It was determined that all three general ratings would benefit from a an earlier merger into the constructionman compression at senior chief, a paygrade earlier than the current compression at the E-9 level."
The move was announced in NAVADMIN 294/15on Dec. 21 and will be effective on Jan. 20.
Currently, both the builder and steelworker ratings are undermanned at the E-8 level in the active force, while the EA rating, which is quite small is overmanned with six senior chiefs filling just four billets. It’s a nearly identical breakdown in manning percentages in the selected reserve, too.
Now, the combined 75 senior chief billets for all three ratings will be reworked and any senior chief BU, EA and SW can fill them. The same is true for the 38 combined selected reserve billets, too.
There will be no CUCS rating badge, and those selected for the rating will follow the same custom of those in the CUCM rate and wear their source rating's badge.
Starting this year, both the active and reserve selection boards will also select sailors from the three source ratings for advancement to CUCS. The reserve board meets first on Feb. 29 and the active board will convene on April 18.
Mark D. Faram is a former reporter for Navy Times. He was a senior writer covering personnel, cultural and historical issues. A nine-year active duty Navy veteran, Faram served from 1978 to 1987 as a Navy Diver and photographer.
