Tuesday, Sept. 21, 2004 | 10:57 a.m.
The Uniformed Service Employment and Reemployment Rights Act protects the jobs of National Guard and Reserve soldiers.
While the jobs of citizen-soldiers called to active duty are held for them by law, the unpredictability of deployments since September 2001 has caused stress for employers and guard members, said Dr. Dixie Sue Allsbrook, Nevada state chairwoman of Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve, a volunteer support group for employers and guard members.
"Employers were initially very supportive after 9/11, but now they are more cautious, because the activations have continued," said Allsbrook. "There have been a number of units that have been deployed for a year, come home for a few months and then are deployed again leaving the employer at a loss.
"If employers knew that for the most part they could count on a five-year window it would solve a lot of the problems we face."
While speaking at last week's National Guard Association Conference in Las Vegas, National Guard Chief, Lt. Gen. Steven Blum, said that the guard is well on its way to rebalancing its troops. The idea is to form many units capable of completing the same missions. That should create a backlog of units that can rotate to active duty as needed once every five years.
Labor Department statistics indicate that such a rotation plan is needed to decrease the burden on employers and soldiers. Through July the Labor Department has received 1,200 complaints from guard and reserve soldiers under the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act.
The department projects 1,440 complaints by the end of the year, up from 1,218 in 2002 and 1,327 in 2003.
In Nevada, Allsbrook's office, which serves as a mediator between employers and soldiers, has seen the numbers of mediation requests rise as the war continues. Prior to the start of the war her office averaged a couple requests for mediation a month, but that number has risen to five or six requests a month, Allsbrook said.
"There are four complaints with the Department of Labor that are ongoing (in Nevada)," said Allsbrook, who tries to mediate the problems so they don't reach that level. "There are cases where an employer wants to keep the replacement over the returning soldier.
"Sometimes an employer tries to use an employee's military service as an excuse to clean house, and there are also instances where businesses just don't know the laws."
It is absolutely illegal for employers to fire citizen-soldiers because they are called to active duty, Allsbrook said.
Guard and reserve members are allowed by law up to five years of absence for military responsibilities. They are entitled to come back to their jobs without any penalties and are eligible for any raises and promotions they may have missed out on while deployed, Allsbrook said.
Ensuring jobs are held for citizen-soldiers must become a priority as the war continues, said Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., in a recorded speech played last week at the National Guard Association Conference.
"We need to do everything we can to make sure that deployments become more predictable so that our soldiers aren't losing jobs," Levin said.
Staff Sgt. Alan Benzon, a 45-year-old Nevada National Guardsman with the Henderson-based 72nd Military Police, has been deployed twice since Sept. 11, 2001. The 72nd Military Police group worked security in California at the Presidio of Monterey from October 2001 through November 2002 before heading to Iraq and serving there from May 2003 through November 2003.
"I think if you are able to tell your family and employers that you are only going to have to go once every five years you're able to give them a better idea of what's happening," said Benzon, who is an administrator for Nextel. "I've been lucky in that my employer has been supportive, but I can understand from an administrative standpoint how tough it is to have to temporarily fill positions."
Benzon, who worked with the 72nd as it provided a security at the Las Vegas Convention Center last week for the visits of President Bush and Sen. John Kerry, said that knowing your civilian job is waiting for you is a comfort.
"You cannot concentrate on issues back home when you are in Iraq," said, Benzon, who lives in Las Vegas with his wife and three children. "It's a battleground and you have to think about your mission and making it from day to day.
"You can't afford to worry about other things."
Guard and reserve members are responsible for notifying their employers when they are called to active duty, but nailing down when the soldier will actually deploy has been a headache, Allsbrook said.
"We've had situations where soldiers have to keep going back to an employer saying that the deployment has been pushed back, and this really throws a wrench into planning," Allsbrook said.
One local unit that faced that issue was the Nevada Army Guard's 1864th Transportation Co. Its 175 soldiers was alerted in April that it would be deployed, but didn't end up heading to Fort Lewis, Wash., for training until mid-August.
Allsbrook, who also serves as the southern area director of the University of Nevada Cooperative Extension, said that employer support works toward compromise when there are problems between soldiers and employers, because legal action through the Department of Labor can take years.
"It's disappointing when an employer does not support the guard and reserves as they should," Allsbrook said. "We have one situation where a reservist went overseas and came back only to find he was behind in his skills for his job in information technology. He was removed from his job as a supervisor, and the issue is now with the Department of Labor."
The case involves Petty Officer 1st Class Bruce Miller, a Naval reservist who returned to Las Vegas in the fall of 2002 after spending a year in the Middle East only to find that he wouldn't be getting his old job back with the System Computing Services office at UNLV.
Another local case that was not able to be solved through mediation involves a female soldier whose job in the medical field was terminated when she was called to active duty, Allsbrook said.
Many employers, such as Metro Police, MGM MIRAGE and local governments have done a good job of ensuring that soldiers can return to their jobs and start working again as if they never left, Allsbrook said.
"We want the guard and reserve soldiers to be able to come home to their jobs," Allsbrook said. "It can be hard on them to come back and not be welcomed with open arms."
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