Guard-Reserve Ombudsman Says 'All Quiet' On Employer
Front
By Gerry J. Gilmore
American Forces Press Service
WASHINGTON, Sept. 16, 2001 -- Employers of National Guard
and Reserve members are ready to support employees called
to active duty for the fight against terrorism, said an
official of the National Committee for Employer Support of
the Guard and Reserve.
"Employers from across the country are asking what they can
do to help," Army Lt. Col. Jess Soto, director of ombudsman
services at committee headquarters in Arlington, Va., said
Sept. 16.
Soto said employers' major concerns seem to be what happens
when their employees are called up and what kind of
benefits they must provide while guardsmen and reservists
are deployed and when they return.
A liaison between reserve component members and their
civilian employers, the committee has a headquarters staff
and about 4,500 volunteers nationwide and in U.S.
territories, he said.
"We get calls from either employers or Guard or Reserve
members," he said, "usually related to either an issue or a
conflict directly related to civilian employment and
military duty."
Under the federal Uniformed Services Employment and Re-
employment Rights Act of 1994, Soto said, Guard and Reserve
members can perform military duty for up to a five-year
accumulative limit and receive job reinstatement when they
return. Yet, the law protects both deployed Guard and
Reserve troops and their employers.
He called USERRA a "workable accommodation." While reserve
service members enjoy job protection, the job they pick up
upon return might not necessarily be the exact same job
they left, he added. The law protects members from
financial loss due to their military service and states
they must be paid the same salary they had at the time they
left.
In turn, USERRA requires military members to provide
employers the earliest notice possible of military duty, in
order to mitigate worksite disruption, Soto said.
Employers can ask commanders to temporarily defer employees
for later duty on a case-by-case basis, he noted. But the
final decision, he added, rests with military authorities.
"If you are a small business operation, a call-up can
affect you more," Soto acknowledged. Most employers,
regardless of size, he noted, hire either full-time or
temporary workers to replace employees who depart for
military duty.
Soto said employers have been generally calm since
President Bush's Sept. 14 order to partially mobilize Guard
and reserve forces in response to Sept. 11 terrorist
attacks on New York's World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
"No one is panicking," Soto said of the employers. "The
$64,000 question is, at what point does military duty
become so overwhelming that it impacts too greatly on
civilian business and enterprise?"
At this point, nobody knows the answer to that question,
Soto said.
The employer support committee was established in 1972. The
Department of Labor has oversight authority for USERRA,
Soto said, adding that DoD was designated to disseminate
information about the law. The committee, he said, falls
under the undersecretary of defense for personnel and
readiness.
For more information on USERRA and on the National Committee for Employer
Support of the Guard and Reserve, visit the committee
Web site at http://esgr.org/.
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