Employers must hold jobs for longer (Reservists and National guard)

11, 2007 - Frequent and longer deployments are making it difficult for companies to hold jobs for military reservists and National Guard members.

CLEVELAND (AP) - Some employers say they'll have an even tougher time holding jobs open for military reservists and National Guard members now that the military has abandoned its two-year limit on the amount of time citizen-soldiers can be required to spend in Iraq or Afghanistan.
Ohio employers say they won't stop hiring military members, but frequent deployments are hard on business.

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The Pentagon ended a two-year limit on the cumulative amount of time a citizen-soldier could be deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan in January, although leaders said they'd try to keep each individual deployment to a year or less.

A 1994 federal law, enacted after veterans of the first Gulf War returned home to unemployment, prohibits employers from discriminating against workers called to active duty. Complaints about illegally lost jobs, pay or benefits can go to mediation or the Labor Department, which forwards the most serious cases to the Department of Justice.

The Labor Department has recovered $7 million in lost wages from nearly 6,500 cases in the last five years for complaints under the Uniformed Services Employment and Re-employment Rights Act.

Last year, veterans made 3,152 complaints to a Defense Department mediation service. The Labor Department handled 1,548 cases, up from 1,195 in 2002, before the war, according to the department's most recent national totals. Some but not all the complaints were filed with both agencies.

more:http://abclocal.go.com/wtvg/story?section=local&id=5111165