RSSBy Ted Daywalt
Military Times Op-Ed
February 5, 2007
All National Guard and Reserve members voluntarily signed up to protect their country, but the rules recently changed: The Defense Department now can recall them to active service more frequently and for longer periods.
In a recent interview with The Associated Press, Dr. David S.C. Chu, undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, said the fact that some Guardsmen and reservists with previous Iraq experience could end up spending more than 24 months on active duty is “no big deal.”
With all due respect, it is a big deal, and one that America’s employers will find hard to support.
Business & Legal Reports (www.Compensation.BLR.com) did a survey of employee benefits in 2004 and found that the number of employers paying full salaries to their activated National Guard and reserve employees fell in some cases by as much as 50 percent. BLR’s 2007 survey shows that the number of employers maintaining full pay had increased slightly since 2005 but still has not returned to previous levels.
A recent Workforce Management magazine poll asked: If you, as an employer, knew that a military reserve or Guard member could be called up and taken away from their job for an indeterminate amount of time, would you still hire a citizen-soldier? The results are disturbing – 51 percent said no, only 31 percent said yes, and 18 percent said they didn’t know.
VetJobs.com, the Internet’s leading military job board, has been receiving many calls from veterans who say employers are asking them, during interviews, if they intend to join the Guard or Reserve. The question is patently illegal, but it is also understandable.
Companies have a fiduciary responsibility to shareholders to run an efficient and profitable operation, but they cannot do so if they can’t count on their employee’s availability. Those making the decisions on how to utilize the Guard and reserve seem to have missed what corporate America is saying.
This new policy puts human resources managers in a quandary. One senior HR vice president commented that, in light of the new policy, his company will continue to support its current employees who have been activated, but they no longer will hire new employees who are in the Guard or Reserve.
I’ve heard this sentiment from many HR managers recently. The employers feel disenfranchised and no longer want to support the system.
USA Today reported Dec. 8 that the number of Guardsmen and reservists who said they had been reassigned, lost benefits or had been fired from their civilian jobs after demobilizing had risen by more than 70 percent over the past six years. The Pentagon reported receiving more than 8,000 complaints in 2006, nearly double from the previous year.
In fiscal 2006, 23 of the 54 National Guard groups failed to meet their recruiting numbers. The Army Reserve met 95 percent of its recruiting goal, while the Navy Reserve met only 87 percent of its goal. This new policy will make it even harder to meet recruiting goals.
More important, employees who are looking at a promotion and sense that their Guard or reserve status will work against them may quit being a citizen-soldier. And if potential Guard and reserve candidates in the civilian work force sense that employers will not support their military service, they may not join the Guard or reserve.
And then there is the problem of family issues created by the repeated call-ups. Upset spouses carry considerably more sway than commanding officers.
As this trend grows, perhaps what’s most disturbing is that returning Guard and reserve personnel will find it harder to obtain meaningful employment that’s equal to their education and experience. Ironically, this is part of the reason many “volunteer” for second and third deployments – they can’t find meaningful civilian jobs due to their service obligations.
It will be interesting to see if Congress and the Defense Department are paying attention to what employers are saying, for now, quietly – because without employer support, the citizen-soldier system cannot work.
And that is a very big deal.