Monday, June 23rd, 2008...8:28 am
The possible U.S. era of USERRA
First off, I’m sorry I haven’t been posting. Realistically, it’s just gonna be sporadic because I have to put paying work first. I still read lawyer blogs, especially employment and legal-writing ones, but I just don’t have the time to read appellate opinions with the closeness necessary to blog about them with confidence.
I’m posting today because I was surprised and pleased to see a pointer at the Workplace Prof Blog to an article in Saturday’s New York Times on USERRA. What’s USERRA? It’s the Uniformed Services Employment and Re-Employment Rights Act. It says people who are part-time servicemembers (reserves, National Guard, even FEMA) should get their civilian jobs or equivalent jobs back if they’re called away from those jobs to serve their country for less than a cumulative five years. There are lots more details out there if you’re curious; the requirements for reporting and so forth get pretty complicated.
When I first encountered this law sometime last year, I was very excited and pitched a story about it. My pitch was rejected, probably correctly, because it didn’t seem like much of an issue at the time. After all, what kind of heartless employer fires someone for serving his/her country? Who’s willing to stand up and essentially say they don’t support the troops when supporting the troops becomes more than a feel-good bumper-sticker slogan? That’s business and social suicide for a small businessperson. (Or anyway it should be.) I dug up only one news story about someone who had to sue under USERRA, a guy from the Pacific Northwest. While I am not pleased as a citizen to see this new one, I’ll admit that I am pleased that my story-idea instincts were on.
The NYT article implies that it’s a growing issue, and whether that’s true or not (phone calls to the Pentagon != legit lawsuits), it’s certainly something that employers will have to keep in mind, especially if there’s a large-scale pullout from Iraq. If I were an employment litigator or a personal injury lawyer with experience in employment rights litigation, I’d be eager to show the world I have the expertise to take on this type of case.
2 Comments
June 23rd, 2008 at 6:18 pm
While it may seem heartless to fire someone who was serving their country, it also seems heartless to fire the person who’s been working in your factory (or whatever) for the past three years.
If there’s one job and two employees, it doesn’t seem unreasonable to pick the one who actually showed up for the last 12 quarters. What if the person who left was a lazy loafer and the person you replaced him with was a super industrious hard worker? What if you’ve changed all your equipment in the past three years and the new employee is fully trained and the old employee doesn’t understand technology?
It’s all well and good to say the former employee should get their job back, but it’s probably not always appropriate. This is a burden that should probably be borne more by government and less by any single employer.
June 23rd, 2008 at 9:15 pm
Well, as I understand it, it’s perfectly legal to find the hypothetical returning servicemember a comparable job. Anyway, this law has been in effect for about 15 years, so it’s not like anyone can claim to be surprised.
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