Service With a Smile
Respecting the rights of employees serving in the uniformed services is more than a patriotic duty: It's a legal obligation.
When your newly hired sales manager told you he was in the Army
Reserve, you figured it meant giving him a little time off now and
then. But the war on terrorism changed all that, and now your
employee's unit has been deployed far away for who knows how
long. What are your obligations?
Time to find out. "Most employers think of military leave
as one weekend a month and two weeks over the summer," says
Jason Branciforte, an attorney with Littler Mendelson in
Washington, DC, who specializes in military leave issues.
"They don't realize it might be years." After all,
the last time U.S. reservists were called up was during the Gulf
War, when many of today's small businesses didn't even
exist.
The federal law that governs this issue, the Uniformed Services
Employment and Reemployment Rights Act (USERRA), prohibits
employers from discriminating on the basis of military service.
That includes both voluntary and involuntary service, whether
it's active duty, active duty for training, inactive duty, or
absence from work for an examination to determine fitness for duty.
In addition to Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines, the law covers
service in the Coast Guard, the National Guard and the commissioned
corps of the Public Health Service, plus any other category the
president designates during a time of war or national
emergency.
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You can't refuse to hire people because they're in the
service or refuse to promote them because they might be called up
for duty. And you can't terminate people because their unit has
been deployed, even if they've been gone three years.
Under USERRA, which applies to all U.S. employers, workers are
entitled to military leave of up to five years. This is unpaid
leave, but benefits such as health insurance and life insurance
must continue if they're provided for employees on other forms
of unpaid leave (such as the Family Medical Leave Act or
disability). Branciforte notes that some employers elect to
continue paying employees' salaries for a given number of
months or to pay the difference between their salaries and military
pay.
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