Some Florida National Guard members are having a hard time finding work after serving in Iraq.
By Associated Press
Published June 11, 2004
PENSACOLA - Staff Sgt. Richard Lynch and Spc. Howell Horan found themselves unemployed when they returned from combat duty in Iraq with the Florida National Guard.
Both say their job prospects look dim.
Other Florida guardsmen, however, say employers are welcoming them back without loss of pay or benefits. That's the way it is supposed to be under laws protecting the jobs of reservists and guardsmen.
Those laws, however, cannot help Lynch and Horan. The siding warehouse where Lynch worked went out of business while he was deployed, and Horan had been laid off as a telephone and computer cable installer just before being called up.
"I don't know if people aren't hiring me because I'm in the National Guard and there's the threat that we may be called back up," said Horan, 31, who had moved from Panama City to Columbia, Tenn., three months before he was deployed.
The husband and father of three said he suspects that may be happening because his brother, also a guardsman, had similar difficulty finding a new job.
"A lot of people didn't want him because he was National Guard," Horan said. He said employers have told him, instead, that they just aren't hiring.
Lynch, 35, of Pensacola said he has been told he lacks the education and experience needed for management or warehouse jobs and that his military service doesn't matter.
"It would be nice if it would," said Lynch, who is married with two children.
The Agency for Workforce Innovation, Florida's state employment agency, has received no reports of discrimination against job seekers because they serve in the Guard or Reserve, spokesman Warren May said.
"Most businesses really do value the experience these guys come back with," May said.
Horan said he had a line on a civilian job in Iraq installing cable at Air Force bases, but he was turned down because his security clearance wasn't high enough. The danger wasn't a deterrent.
"For the money they were offering, I was willing," he said. "It's not as bad as the press makes it seem."
Horan said he's thinking about seeking his release from the Guard so he can join the regular Army, something he was considering before going to Iraq. He was activated the day he was supposed to get an Army physical.
The decision is partly economic - he needs a job - but Horan said he also likes the military lifestyle.
Besides working, Lynch had been a full-time student at Pensacola Junior College. He plans to return but will switch from computer networking because that field is drying up. He's not sure what he will take, but medical technology and accounting are two possibilities.
His wife works as an administrator at a real estate office, so the family is not yet hurting financially.
Others have had better luck than Lynch and Horan.
National Guard Sgt. Amos Peterson, 46, of Cottondale said his prison guard job, also with the rank of sergeant, was waiting for him at Holmes Correctional Institution in Bonifay.
"Same pay, nothing changed," Peterson said. "Hey, it was just like I never left."
By law that's the way it is supposed to be. If not, soldiers are instructed to report grievances to their commanding officers. If they cannot settled the issues, volunteer ombudsmen with the National Committee for Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve can step in.
The most common complaints are violations of the escalator principle, said Herman Garrett, ESGR's Florida ombudsman coordinator. Guardsmen are supposed to receive any promotions or raises they would have received had they not left.
"The soldier does not step on where he got off," said Garrett, a labor relations consultant in Melbourne. "He steps on where he should have been."
In one case, an employer refused to give a soldier a raise, claiming other workers had received only merit increases while he was away. All the other employees, however, had gotten such raises, although at differing rates, Garrett said. The issue was settled with the soldier getting a raise at the average percentage of other workers' increases.
Another soldier complained that an employer failed to contribute to his individual retirement account while he was gone. It was settled with the employer agreeing to make up the difference, said former State Attorney David Bludworth of West Palm Beach, ESGR's Florida chairman.
During the 13 months National Guard Sgt. 1st Class Michael Boddy, 40, of Pensacola was on active duty, his employer, the Santa Rosa County Tax Collector's Office, paid nothing into the state retirement system.
Boddy, the tax collector's training director, at first was afraid those benefits were lost, but he later learned he had nothing to worry about.
State and local agencies participating in the state system must pay all employer contributions, with interest, for workers who apply for return to regularly established positions within 90 days of completing military leave, according to a policy statement from the Division of Retirement.
