USCG Changes Waiver Policy, Will No Longer Allow Reserves to Keep SELRES Billets While Serving on Long Term Active Duty

The US Coast Guard has been attempting to supplement its shortage of active-duty members with reservists. To entice reservists to come on active duty, it has been waiving requirements listed in two Commandant Instructions that require a SELRES member who takes Active Duty for Operational Support (ADOS) orders of 181 days or more to give up or lose their assigned reserve billet. Many reservists who have a billet close to home or in a particular job or location they like were eager to find ways to keep their billet and not have to find something suitable on the typically thin off-season assignment list once they complete their active duty.

Unfortunately, this waiver policy is having downstream effects, and those "open-but-filled" billets remain blocked, preventing the billet from being filled by another reservist who may want it. As reservists typically augment the active-duty workforce on drill weekends, this lack of support is felt by the active-duty unit, and one reservist's gain (not losing their billet) is another reservist's, and the unit's, loss.

So now the USCG is walking this back and making changes to its waiver policy for reserves accepting long term active duty: all reservists taking new ADOS orders starting 01 OCT 2024 totaling more than 181 days, whether long-term or back-to-back short-term orders, will no longer be allowed to remain in their SELRES billet and must vacate their assignment. This means these reservists will have to apply and compete for an assignment once released from active duty.

It remains to be seen how this will impact a reserve member's desire to accept an ADOS assignment. The potential mitigating factor, double encumbering a billet (which the USCG does all the time for junior officers and junior enlisted billets) would have applied equally under the old waiver policy or this new one, so it's not a real solution. There's no win here, under the waiver policy some reservists will be happy and others not, and without it those groups will flip. What this does accomplish is to help Reserve Personnel Management better manage and plan assignments. If there's an appreciable change in the number of reservists volunteering for ADOS assignments, then the USCG may be forced to look at revising this policy again or at other alternatives.