question for Guard/Reservists that work for a small company

1,999 Views | 10 Replies | Last: 4 yr ago by F4GIB71
neutics
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AG
I'm struggling to get my employer to support my service in the USAR. No violations of USERRA yet (that I know of) but they made it clear in my otherwise stellar annual review that I am out of office too much for "military stuff". I quickly countered as over the last 12 calendar months I have only technically missed 5 work days for AT, and have taken less than what we are allowed for vacation over that same time period.

I know that per USERRA they cannot count my AT days as vacation, yet they are also under no obligation to pay me for that time either. I offered this as a potential way to resolve this issue, to which they said it is not a pay issue as much as just a matter of time as we are a very small firm (4.5 employees) so when any one of us is gone it significantly impacts our operations.

I feel very strongly about this topic for a number of reasons - 15 year of service so far and am of course planning to stay until at least 20. I have made choices in my Reserve service to try to dial back to less demanding roles so I could focus more on my primary career and family etc. One of the main reasons I am even able to work for such a small firm (with very limited benefits) is due to having access to Tricare Reserve Select. Our firm was founded by a West Point grad, one of our owners is a grad (who was also in the Guard at one point), I'm a grad and I'd say 1/3 of our clients have a military background so this is hypocritical in my opinion.

Any thoughts on how to handle this - specifically from those in a similar situation (i.e. small private company)? I'd prefer not to file a dispute with ESGR if possible, or at least not yet.
HollywoodBQ
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AG

Quote:

Our firm was founded by a West Point grad, one of our owners is a grad (who was also in the Guard at one point), I'm a grad and I'd say 1/3 of our clients have a military background so this is hypocritical in my opinion.
Yeah... hypocrisy when it comes to money/work. Don't be surprised. I used to cringe every time one of the high ranking guys at my old job used to talk about the idea that we should hire more Veterans. I was totally on board with that, yeah, let's interview some guys and create a program for developing the skills they need for this job.

Nothing ever happened beyond a few happy snaps to post in the company newsletter so we could pat ourselves on the back about - "helping" Veterans. The really sad thing is that the guy who said we should do it was a USNA grad. In reality though, that dude had zero interest in hiring any Veterans off the street.

I don't know how it is in the Army Reserve but in the National Guard, we definitely had some legal resources who could talk to an employer on our behalf if it got to that. I never had any trouble but a few of my soldiers did. In particular, the one who worked for a small city in West Texas where he kept having his "on-call" weekend coincide with our drill weekend (I do suspect he was partly complicit in that). And another guy who made a living doing seasonal odd jobs like harvesting pecans near San Saba.

You're well within your rights to take the time off without pay. When I worked for a publicly traded company, I always used vacation because I couldn't afford the loss of pay from my civilian job versus the National Guard. When I worked for the State of Texas, they did have 3 weeks of military leave available in addition to your vacation. That was a nice benefit.

In your case, trying to manage expectations around being away for 2 weeks, or the occasional 3 day drill weekend, those sound like some hard conversations you'll have to have about performance expectations with the rest of the employees/managers/owners at your firm.

Frankly if you've only got 4.5 people in your organisation, they should be asking you for your drill dates, especially Annual Training, as early in the year as possible. And everybody else should schedule their vacations around you to ensure the smoothest operations for your customers.

Sounds like you're stuck between what's legally correct and what makes sense for the business.

Ultimately, for me, I decided that if I couldn't afford to take a 2 week AT off from my civilian job, there was no way in the world that I'd be able to afford to get activated for a deployment so I did my 8 years and that was that. Good call too because 5 years later, my guys spent one year in Iraq. That would have destroyed me financially.

Good Luck on the next 5 years.
BQ78
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AG
Quote:

I am out of office too much for "military stuff".
If they said that then it sounds like the did violate USERRA
APHIS AG
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Document, document, document.

When I deployed to Bosnia with the Texas 49th ARMD, there was a teacher from the HISD that also received orders. Well the HISD threatened to fire him if he deployed and their lawyers were stupid enough to actually put it in writing.

After he got a nice settlement from them. He was offered another teaching position outside of Houston on his return.
Complaint Investigator
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AG
1.) Document heavily. They've already violated USERRA by mentioning you were out too much.

2.) Contact ESGR and get them to give you advice and/or speak with your employer on your behalf

3.) Find a company that is more military friendly and can appreciate you being a reservist.

I am out almost every week for half a day flying for the Guard, but my company allows me the flexibility to work when I want to make up my time. I work well over 40 hours per week so it's generally a non-issue, but my employer consistently makes the top Veteran/reservist friendly companies to work with year over year.

neutics
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Awesome advice from everyone - really appreciate you all taking the time to read and respond.

Next step for me is to try to get something on paper (email) as all I have right now is based on a phone call. Without trying to trap my employer I'm going to ask for clarification on their concerns.

Then, I think this will become an issue again as soon as I get my AT dates for the rest of the year and request my vacation on top of that. I'm giving them as much notice as I possibly can, and trying to adjust my military training dates around their pre-planned vacations to minimize any overlap and impact on our firm.

Yes - already discussing opportunities with other firms though that brings up another question of how much to disclose and discuss about my Reserve service during the interview process. It's on my resume currently, and I would not feel right about trying to hide this completely from a potential employer as again I would hope they would view my service and the competencies that come with it as an asset to their company.

Thanks again Ags
JABQ04
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You don't already have your AT dates? The couple years I was in the Guard we'd get a calendar at the start of the fiscal year to give to our employers. Sometimes a drill weekend would shift a week or so but they had plenty of warning for when I was gone. I can see where they are getting irritated if they don't know when your leaving and all of a sudden your dropping that you need to be gone for two weeks. It doesn't make it right by any means but I can see their frustration. In my case I got out of the Guard because it didn't work with my job schedule. I work shift work and I was losing money by drilling on weekends I was scheduled to work or giving up a free weekend that I could have spent with my family. No one at work *****ed about me being gone, just ultimately decided I need to focus on one or the other and chose civilian career since I was a platoon sergeant and my guard commitment was no longer just one weekend a month but non stop with NCOERS, planning training etc..... best of luck to you.
neutics
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JABQ04 said:

You don't already have your AT dates? The couple years I was in the Guard we'd get a calendar at the start of the fiscal year to give to our employers. Sometimes a drill weekend would shift a week or so but they had plenty of warning for when I was gone. I can see where they are getting irritated if they don't know when your leaving and all of a sudden your dropping that you need to be gone for two weeks. It doesn't make it right by any means but I can see their frustration. In my case I got out of the Guard because it didn't work with my job schedule. I work shift work and I was losing money by drilling on weekends I was scheduled to work or giving up a free weekend that I could have spent with my family. No one at work *****ed about me being gone, just ultimately decided I need to focus on one or the other and chose civilian career since I was a platoon sergeant and my guard commitment was no longer just one weekend a month but non stop with NCOERS, planning training etc..... best of luck to you.
Yeah - unique unit that is essentially all O-5's and we choose one of 8-9 rotations throughout the year. I'm new to the unit as of April so have submitted preferences but no orders yet. Normally I'd know by the beginning of the FY
AGhistorian
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I simpathize with you I had a similar experience, and I was actually working for TAMU at the time. I had my supervisor and the HR Rep tell me in a meeting that I was "taking" to much time for military stuff and that they thought it be best if I make a "choice between the two". I had to take it all the way up to the Director of HR for the university and meet with them personally to resolve the issue. It was only at that level did they realize how big a deal it was and reasured me that my job was not at risk. I also got ESGR involved to help try and mediate the situation with my supervisor.

After that point no one gave me a hard time about my military leave. HOWEVER, the environment turned toxic. My supervisor started micromanaging everything I did, and even though he couldn't find any fault with my job performance it was clear (at least to me, and some of my co-workers) that he was looking for something to complain about. It ended up souring the job for me, and I took a different job after about 6 months of that.

It has all worked out for me in the end, I'm still in the reserve, but it was not a fun experience.

On the job search topic I always left my experience on my resume. As far as I know (any labor lawyers please correct me if I'm wrong) a prospective employer cannot ask you any questions in the interview process about your current military status, or your military committments, that would similarly violate USERRA. With that said it's super hard to enforce that portion of the law, and you would likley have to sue. So if for some reason someone does ask you about it I would be circumspect and simply state the minimum committment 1 weekend a month and two weeks a year. If it were me I would not feel bad about being evasive about it, they would be the ones violating the law.
neutics
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AG
AGhistorian said:

On the job search topic I always left my experience on my resume. As far as I know (any labor lawyers please correct me if I'm wrong) a prospective employer cannot ask you any questions in the interview process about your current military status, or your military committments, that would similarly violate USERRA. With that said it's super hard to enforce that portion of the law, and you would likley have to sue. So if for some reason someone does ask you about it I would be circumspect and simply state the minimum committment 1 weekend a month and two weeks a year. If it were me I would not feel bad about being evasive about it, they would be the ones violating the law.
Good advice. This exact scenario came up during an interview at a very large computer company in Round Rock a few years ago. I was just finishing my MBA at Mays and searching for that first real civilian job, and was still in the Reserves to provide healthcare for the family through school.

Vice President at the megacorp (female) supposedly loved hiring former military officers, but after looking at my resume said something to the effect of "you're not going to stay in the Reserves, are you?" At that point I was undecided so deferred, but couldn't believe she actually asked that. No matter - I got the job HA

Others more senior and smarter than I have advised on the difficulty of continuing to climb both the corporate ladder if you want to be an exec and advance in the Guard or Reserves. I'm no longer in a megacorp and am ok not making further rank. Those who do make O-6 and higher have made a different choice, and generally do not have as demanding of corporate careers that are ok with them being gone 30-60 days a year or more.
HollywoodBQ
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AG
I did work for Megacorp in Round Rock when I was in the Guard in the 1990s. I worked hard and they gave me plenty of opportunity and compensation. Funniest thing was my co-workers asking me what kind of air conditioning we had in an Abrams Tank.

It was also during this time that I had one co-worker (old lady who grew up during the Vietnam era) who made it a point to thank me for my service. She was the only one, ever, who thanked me for serving. That is until the past decade when "Thank You for your Service" became trendy.

As a junior officer, I took a look at all the guys who were O-5 and up. Not one of them had what I would call a demanding private sector job. Not a single one. Many of them worked for the State of Texas or School Districts. Outside of that, I knew one who was a small town Bank President and another one who worked for a Fire Department.

The point is that all of those jobs provided plenty of time for their "part-time" Guard job.

I also had a friend whose father was an O-8 in the Reserves. He worked for a school district and managed 120 days of service in one calendar year as a two-star.
F4GIB71
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My time was a long time ago so probably not helpful to you but thought I'd chime in. I was in industrial sales in Houston working for a fairly large (for our industry) manufacturers rep. We had a guy from our Guard unit hired which eventually grew to six Guardsmen working for the company. We flew F-101 two seat interceptors, then two seat F-4 fighters with half being pilots and half being back seaters so we, not only worked together, we flew together. We often joked that we better not have a mid-air or we'd wipe out the whole company's sales force. They were very accommodating with our schedules but we were always up front with them on our commitments.

This was all before 9/11. Even though i was retired by then, I saw the lines between active duty and the Guard/Reserves blurred significantly. By then i was working for another rep company. We had one of our guys who was a Command Sergeant Major with the Army Reserves in Houston. He was called to active duty twice for a prolonged period. While i fully supported his service, i saw the problem for the company. The rest of us had to cover his accounts while he was on AD but there was a natural tendency to ask oneself, how much time do i spend serving his accounts knowing he'd get them back which he returned. Also the more time we worked with his accounts, we were taking away from our own. From his standpoint, it was also a pay cut. Even as a CSM, it was a lot less than a sales engineer. After the second AD tour, he went to the Retired Reserves.

Anyway, thanks for your service (from another serviceman)
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