Indiana military families deserve better: A call for congressional oversight of the GHC program
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As CEO of one of the nation’s largest moving companies, I know I speak for the entire moving industry when I say it is a privilege to serve our service men and women and their families by moving more than 300,000 of them a year to new mission postings—including postings throughout Indiana.
Our state is home to the tens of thousands of active and reserve military and their families. Many of whom are assigned to bases such as Camp Atterbury in Edinburgh or the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Crane Division in Crane. As part of the job, servicemembers and their families are often required to relocate at a moment’s notice to a new location and need support from moving companies to make that happen.
However, the Global Household Goods Contract (GHC) Program from the Department of Defense’s U.S. Transportation Command (TRANSCOM) could make that process much more strenuous for Indiana’s military families.
In recent years, the professional moving industry has made significant improvements in the level of customer service delivered as part of military moves, including enhanced communication and on-time deliveries, and a reduction in lost and damaged property—all by working hand in hand with TRANSCOM.
A recent independent scientific survey found that 90% of military families were satisfied with recent moves. This is consistent with TRANSCOM’s own publicly available dashboard, which before it was recently taken down, showed an 88.9% satisfaction rate during the peak season and 93% satisfaction in 2024 so far.
So why does TRANSCOM continue to insist that the current system of military moves is broken and must be scrapped?
America’s professional movers are committed to this mission. During the perilous years of COVID-19, professional movers stood up to the risks and uncertainties and continued to perform hundreds of thousands of military moves—wiping down the contents of entire households, wearing masks for hours in sweltering summer temperatures, and adjusting to continually changing regulations on military bases.
Again and again, the industry has risen to the occasion to meet the needs of our service families. The improvements, the innovation, and the dedicated service are all byproducts of a competitive system, in which a host of professional moving companies and independent contractors vie based on price, capacity, and timeliness.
That’s why I am confused and deeply concerned that TRANSCOM seems committed to throwing out a system that works, that’s continually improving, and that supports American competitiveness in favor of a monopolistic, untested new system with no backup plan.
TRANSCOM’s new GHC Program places a single private consortium in charge of coordinating all military relocations, giving them “one throat to choke” (as they put it). But privatizing military moves through a single entity contrasts sharply with President Biden’s executive order promoting American competition and the DoD’s own analysis of the need for competition in the defense sector, in which it stated: “Competition with the DIB (Defense Industrial Base) is critical to national and economic security.”
To date, TRANSCOM has turned a deaf ear to my concerns that the GHC is built on faulty premises and burdensome new financial, commercial, operational, and legal requirements. For example, the GHC for the first time enforces the Service Contract Act (SCA) for all interstate military household shipments, including those handled by independent contractors. The SCA requires contractors and subcontractors on specific government contracts to pay their employees prevailing hourly wages as determined by the U.S. Department of Labor.
I have yet to receive any guidance from the Department of Labor or TRANSCOM on how exactly our business should comply with these requirements. How can businesses financially and logistically prepare to service military families in the future without these answers?
The transition to the GHC was initiated years ago under vastly different circumstances. Since then, labor shortages, supply chain disruptions, higher fuel costs, and historic levels of inflation have all contributed to an environment where the math underpinning the GHC no longer adds up.
To all who will listen, there is no backup plan when this risky and unnecessary experiment fails. Military families will be left to move themselves, taking on the stress and logistical challenges of a change of station on top of all the other demands that come with being a military family.
I call on our Indiana Congressional leaders to give this high-stakes experiment the careful scrutiny it demands – and insist on a strategic pause of GHC implementation so a comprehensive evaluation of its feasibility can be conducted by the Government Accountability Office (GAO).
Jack Griffin is Chairman and CEO of Atlas World Group, Inc. and its 10 subsidiaries, including Atlas Van Lines. As the country’s second‐largest mover, Atlas brings approximately 2,500 professional van operators and 3,700 trucks to serve U.S. military installations.