Some reservists lose jobs while deployed

WASHINGTON — Last week we learned that many of our disabled Iraq-war veterans are being shafted by the military and medical bureaucracy. Now we find out that some reservists and members of the National Guard are returning home to find their jobs gone.

Although there is a 1994 law — the Uniformed Services Employment and Re-employment Rights Act — requiring reservists to be fairly and quickly rehired after deployment, it is often not enforced. A military office called Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve, whose local branches returning soldiers are to contact if they can't get their jobs back, has just two press releases on its Web site for 2007.

One said: "The military is grateful to the civilian employers of National Guardsmen and reservists who support their employees when they're called to duty, said Marine Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff," in a statement in Anchorage, Alaska, a few days ago.

January's press release said the Department of Defense will mobilize Guard and reserve members by units, increasing the odds of multiple deployments by individuals. While it said the goal is only one year of involuntary deployment and five years of non-mobilization, because of "today's global demands" that will not be possible for all units.

Since Sept. 11, 2001, the Department of Defense has mobilized more than 500,000 reservists and Guard members. Sometimes they make up nearly half of the U.S. ground troops fighting abroad.

An investigation of the military's employer-support office last year for Denver magazine, by Maximillian Potter, argued that although it should be a "tremendous resource" for returning U.S. troops, it is "a bureaucratic mess, mired in incompetence, undermined by conflict of interest and accountable to no one."

A new report in February by the Government Accountability Office found that the Pentagon does not even know the scope of the problems reservists face when they try to go back to work. In 2005, one out of seven was thought to return jobless.

Under the 1994 law, there are about 12,400 formal complaints filed each year alleging that employers refused to give returning reservists and Guard members their old jobs. The GAO said Congress hears about 2,400 of those complaints.