Photo by Erica Wilkins
Mike Nitti describes his work at Custom Crafters auto shop.

Welcome Home, Your Job Awaits

By Mike Melanson
AUSTIN – When Sgt. Michael Nitti left for a six-month hitch as an Army reservist in Afghanistan in 2002, he had one less thing to worry about than soldiers typically deployed in the Gulf War a decade earlier – his employer, Richard Wood, the owner of Custom Car Crafters in Austin, promised Nitti that his job as a collision technician would be waiting for him when he returned.

Wood kept his word and more. He provided Nitti with “differential pay” – the difference between what Nitti made as a soldier and what he would make in his civilian job. And since Nitti makes more than twice as much working in Wood’s shop, the differential pay helped take care of Nitti’s wife and three children while he was overseas. Wood not only paid the difference while Nitti was deployed, he even made a car payment for him.

Nitti and many of his fellow war vets could breathe a little easier than their Gulf War compatriots because of the Uniformed Services Employment and Re-employment Rights Act that Congress signed into law in 1994. The law guarantees a reservist's career, or the career of any uniformed member of the military, will not be affected by being called into active duty or taking time off from work to attend training sessions or any other forms of duty. It expands upon the rights previously offered in a 1940 re-employment rights act, strengthening enforcement methods, requiring the re-employment of soldiers returning disabled and giving federal employees a path of recourse against a government that was sometimes unwilling to re-employ the soldiers it had sent to war. A reservist, as opposed to an enlisted soldier on active duty, leads a civilian life, holding a regular job and taking time throughout the year for training exercises. According to the Army National Guard, over 248,000 reservists have been called into active duty since 9/11 and as of April 2006, there were over 39,000 in Iraq and over 14,000 in Afghanistan.

"It was much harder to get a job back under VRR,” said Dwain James, referring to the Veterans' Re-employment Rights Act of 1940. “[The new law] really strengthened service members' rights," added James, executive director of Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve, in a telephone interview.

The act ensures service members will regain their employment when returning from war, provided that they meet a few basic requirements. Reservists are required to notify employers of their deployment, request re-employment within a timely manner after returning and receive an honorable discharge. With these requirements met, soldiers can expect re-employment. The law requires that employers act as if the employee were present the whole time they were deployed. If, while a soldier was on active duty, he would have received a promotion, the soldier is protected by law to receive that promotion upon return. The law also requires that employers re-employ an injured or disabled returning reservist in any capacity they may serve, providing any training necessary. The law applies equally to all businesses, regardless of size, and to all uniformed members of the military who are called into active duty and must leave their jobs.

Nitti said that the first time told his boss he had to leave for a few weeks for a training session, Wood immediately asked how much he would be paying him while he was gone. For Wood, it wasn’t even a question of if he should pay his employee, but instead how much.

Nitti works for one of eight employers in Texas to recently win the Pro Patria Award, an honor given to employers who go beyond the requirements of the law to aid employees who are members of the National Guard or Army Reserve. The City of Austin, another Pro Patria Award winning employee, offers many of the same benefits to its employees deployed as part of the Guard or Reserve. Allan Bergeron, the military consultant for the City of Austin, said the city has almost 13,000 employees with 130 active members of the Guard or Reserve, 25 currently on military leave. The city offers differential pay to its deployed employees, who work primarily for the police department, the fire department and emergency medical services.

“Knowing I had a job when I got back … was a weight off my shoulders,” said Sgt. Lek Mateo, a supervisor with Public Works.

While the new act does more than the previous law, some soldiers still experience problems upon returning home. Harvey King, the assistant state director of veterans' employment and training for the Department of Labor, said the department received 70 official complaints in the 2007 fiscal year and 48 more since the new fiscal year began on Oct. 1 from soldiers who did not have a job when returning home. King works closely with James and Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve, a mostly volunteer-run organization that works to educate employers and soldiers of their rights. Both agree that 98 percent of cases in which an employee returns and is told he or she doesn’t have a job are taken care of with a simple phone call.

"Sometimes you have a hardheaded individual that has to think about it for a day or two and accept their fate,” said James. “The law is pretty strict as it comes to employers – it protects the individual."

Employers who don’t readily give a job back may face a civil lawsuit, at which time the employer may be held responsible for lost wages and will be forced under law to re-employ the returning soldier. The employer has but one defense for not re-employing returning reservist: If the job would have been eliminated because of an economic downturn and a downsizing of the workforce, the soldier is not guaranteed that job. Just as with promotion, the soldier is treated as if they were present the entire time they are on active duty.

One problem may be that some reservists are unaware of the protection they are guaranteed under the law. When Summer Spikerman told her employer, the Alamo Drafthouse in Houston, that she was being deployed, she was demoted, and unaware of her rights, she quit her job shortly after.

“Everything that I know about is purely word of mouth, as is a lot of information from the Army,” she wrote in an e-mail.

Mateo, the City of Austin employee, conceded that there is still room for abuse in the new act, especially in smaller towns, noting that some employers will rehire returning employees, but then let them go soon after.

But the main issue for employers recently has been recurrent and increasingly lengthy deployments, with soldiers called back two or three times and serving for as long as 18 to 20 months at a time. This problem can be even more profound for smaller employees, such as Custom Car Crafters, which had only about 20 employees at the time of Nitti's deployment. The employer, in the soldier's absence, can hire a temporary replacement or ask that its remaining employees fill in the gap. Nitti said that there are a couple other retired military soldiers working at Custom Car Crafters and that everyone willingly pitched in while he was overseas.

"In many cases it requires a huge sacrifice on the end of the employers,” said James, adding that many employers in Texas are more than willing to do what it takes to support their employees as they serve their country. Like Wood, they see it as a way of serving their country while their employees do the same.