Pros
Decently high pay....if you can stay for more than a year. Easier intro to getting a clearance.
Cons
No set schedules. No set reliefs. No set regions. This means that you have almost no protection for a consistent schedule. Schedules change like the seasons here with good officers having worked for years during the day being involuntarily switched to overnights or like others who having worked twenty minutes away from home for the last couple years are now being sent to a post almost two hours away...one way. Do not let the recruiters lie to you, there is almost NO ACCOMADATIONS unless legally protected but even then, be prepared to fight for your rights. Scheduling use to be handled by on site supervisors until a short while ago when a team of unqualified petty corporate personnel, (reportedly most of them arent even qualified to be on contract), were given essentially unlimited power over schedules. We call them ops/scheduling. They reportedly operate utilizing underhanded tactics, favoritism, harassment, and with a total lack of empathy for the working force. It seems as though anything to make their jobs easier and save the company money is a necessary sacrifice of your time and health. Speak out against any borderline illegal/contract breaching ideas they have and you might find yourself stuck outside for 12 hours in 100 degree weather with limited breaks. Many officers believe the supervisors on contract are to blame for being held over but in reality, supervisors have no authority here over your schedules, reportedly not even the project manager has authority over the operations/scheduling department. Essentially if you have a problem with your schedule, there is no one around who can help you aside from maybe a fellow officer. You can't even easily speak directly to the scheduling/ ops teams. You have to leave a voicemail which they will most likely ignore. They will try to convince you to get more certifications on contract to achieve better opportunity but this appears more often than not a ploy to be able to use and abuse you as much as they please. As I said, whatever makes their job easier. There is a union which is suppose to stand up for officers especially for contract violations but more often than not sells us out and fails to represent our interests. We were even told one day that many grievances were thrown out at one point due to "bad handwriting" with no effort to follow up with officers made. Also, without everyone voting, the union reportedly agreed to allowing the company to prorate the bonuses which caused a lot of officers to miss out on thousands going forward. There is suspicion on contract the union representatives are corrupt and/or being paid under the table as a result of all this.
