While reservists serve, their jobs don't always wait

[Nitrogenica]

Source: Christian Science Monitor

Between 2004 and 2006, returning volunteers filed 16,000 complaints against employers.

Washington - Steve Duarte worked in human resources for the same company for 19 years. But within months of returning from Iraq with his Marine Reserve unit in 2003 – his second military deployment in two years – he was told his job was ending in a week.

"There was that initial shock – and then the shock of 'What am I going to do?' " recalls Mr. Duarte of Littleton, Colo., whose expenses at the time included tuition for his son at the University of Denver.

As the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan grind on, tensions are mounting between the military's civilian volunteers, trying to step back into their professions, and employers, straining at times to cope with a growing cadre of workers who are away at war for months then expect to regain their former jobs. A 1994 law – the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act (USERRA) – gives workers that right, along with promotions or other benefits they would have earned had they not been deployed. But with more than 600,000 reservists and guardsmen mobilized since 9/11, thousands have found their jobs gone or positions diminished when they returned.



Read more: http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0410/p01s03-usmi.html

[babylonsister]

1. Rec'd. More collateral damage from such wonderful troop support.

:grr:

[Doctor_J]

2. Yeah but those bosses all wear flag lapel pins and have BIG MAGNETS

on their SUV's

[L0oniX]

3. Some employers may be concerned about the effects of PSD and safety in the work place.

There are other factors such as DU poisoning which can affect others but more directly in the family. Who wants to have an employee who will be sick from DU and will be taking time off because of the multiple symptoms and effects of the poisoning? Health support should come from the VA and our government who sent them into harms way but instead Iraq vets are denied proper diagnosis and treatment. The Government has done everything it can to deny the effects of DU poisoning. When you couple the effects of DU poisoning with PSD you have an very undesirable situation with a employee. I wish people would investigate the service before they join and become victims. Should employers who were and are not for the war be saddled with the extra costs of employing someone who has been victimized by our government? Now we have a recession and people are losing their jobs and employers have to tighten up. Put yourself in the shoes of the employer and the vets. What would you do?

:scared:

[rocktivity]

4. Candidate for this month's "You Call This NEWS?" award

The law is a ticklish issue for companies...On one hand, they don't want to do anything that makes them look unpatriotic. On the other, the long and sometimes repeated deployments of key personnel can complicate staffing.

Are the reservists being stop-lossed, too? That is, are they gone for months or a year at a time?

:shrug:
rocknation

[SunDrop23]

5. Big deal, freedom ain't free!

:sarcasm:

[Olney Blue]

6. Another terrible consequence of this damn war.