Posted on: Sunday, June 20, 2004

Returning reservists readjust to workforce

By Stephanie Armour
USA Today

Just more than a year ago, Larry Tentinger was a Navy reservist in Iraq overseeing medical care for nearly 1,000 Marines. The senior corpsman passed his days riding a Humvee into combat and surviving the gunmen who lurked in the city.

Today, he is back at his job as an assistant professor in the education school at the University of South Dakota. His biggest concern now is mentoring students; before, it was keeping soldiers alive.

"Coming back to work is a bit of an adjustment," says Tentinger, 54, of Beresford, S.D., whose platoon was one of the first to enter Baghdad. "A soldier has to accept his own mortality. I had time to reflect on what's really important. I find myself wanting to spread the message not to take what we have for granted."

In the largest troop rotation of reserve forces since World War II, tens of thousands of National Guard members and other reservists who served in Iraq and Afghanistan are returning to civilian jobs — making the transition from the battlefield to the workplace.

Many of these civilian soldiers are trying to pick up where they left off.

More than 387,000 people have been called up since Sept. 11, 2001. Nearly 233,000 have been demobilized; about 155,000 remain on active duty. Most are members of the Guard or other reservists called up for the war on terrorism.

In the first Iraq war, 265,000 were called up for Operation Desert Storm.

Returning to work is a radical shift. These soldiers spent months at war, where they've helped establish elected councils in cities in Iraq, tended to the wounded, built schools for children whose only homes are mud huts, gone weeks without showers and ridden across the desert in dusty convoys for days. Now, in a matter of days or months, they're transformed back into employees.

"Most companies welcome them back, and that's good," says Lou Leto of the Reserve Officers Association, a member-based nonprofit in Washington. "But a lot of time, there is friction. Getting back — often it's a psychological challenge. Your life has been in jeopardy every day, you've seen things you'd rather not see. It helps put work and other things in perspective."

Some jobs gone

Many get a hero's welcome from employers, including extra benefits, letters of praise from CEOs and gifts for their families.

Others have returned to find that, in this competitive economy, their companies have closed and their jobs are gone.

Some fought in Iraq only to face an equally tough battle at home: legal entanglements with employers who deny them their jobs or benefits.

Brandon Ratliff, 31, a member of the Army Reserve who had been called to active duty, survived his nine-month tour in Afghanistan. It was the fight to get his job back that cost him his life, his family says.

According to his mother and their family lawyer Jason Blue, Ratliff had been told before his deployment that he would get a promotion with the Department of Health in Columbus, Ohio, where he worked as a coordinator overseeing programs to reduce sexually transmitted diseases. His promotion would have elevated him to management, Blue says. But when he returned, he was denied the promotion and assigned mostly menial tasks, his mother and Blue say.

On March 18, Ratliff shot himself.

The problems getting his job back "played a great role" in his death, says his mother, Susan Coats. "He'd hoped to make a career at the Health Department. He'd seen horrific things. He saw a buddy blown up by a land mine. He saw men skinned alive. He carried body parts ... then he learned his job had been given to someone else."

The city attorney's office says that Ratliff was returned to his current position, as required by federal law, and that the position he had thought he'd have was eliminated because of city budget cuts. The Department of Labor continues to investigate the case.

Since Ratliff's death, the mayor's office has stepped up efforts to assist returning veterans.

Filing complaints

While more soldiers are filing complaints against employers, the increase can be traced to the higher number of Guard members and other reservists serving today, government officials say. Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, about 3,500 complaints have been received by the Department of Labor's Veterans' Employment and Training Service, which enforces the 1994 law. The rate of complaints is more than 20 percent lower, however, than in Desert Storm.

The National Committee for Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve, which mediates complaints from soldiers and handles requests for information about the law, fields about 2,000 inquiries a month. Most of those are for general information.

"As our troops defend our freedom and security around the world, we are doing everything we can to protect the employment rights of guardsmen and reservists here at home," Labor Secretary Elaine Chao said in a statement.

Facing legal battles

But some returning Guard members and other reservists are hiring lawyers and filing lawsuits in an effort to secure jobs or draw attention to the issues facing returning veterans.

They're soldiers such as Ron Vander Wal of Pollock, S.D., who returned in March from active duty in Iraq. He sought to return to his telephone customer-service job at a facility of Sykes Enterprises in Bismarck, N.D., but was told "there were no positions available to him," according to a lawsuit. The lawsuit also says Sykes sought to replace veterans with lower-paid workers.

A Sykes spokesman says Vander Wal was told that he'd have a job, but not the one he'd left, and that he would get training for the new job. He is currently working at Sykes.

Some have no recourse.

In March 2003, National Guardsman Michael Dickenson, 24, was called to active duty in Iraq. He had just bought a house in Superior, Wis.; his son, Nicholas, was almost 1. He left before moving into the new place or witnessing Nicholas' birthday.

He left his home for the desert of Nasiriyah. There, he worked as an administrative specialist helping to rebuild schools and irrigation work. He was comforted knowing that his full-time union job in the warehouse of Fleming Foods was secure.

Then his wife got a letter. His employer had gone bankrupt and was closing. His job was gone.

"It was a concern for me. It was a good job, with health benefits, and it paid $18 an hour," Dickenson says.

He returned home in April and decided to focus full time on college; he hopes to graduate next year with a degree in chemical engineering. His wife, Jaimi, is also a full-time college student and Guard member. A state program for displaced workers is paying his schooling, and he collects unemployment, but that's $329 a week, less than half what he made before.

And he worries that being in the Guard might hurt him when it comes time to find work again.

"Being a guardsman may hinder employability. An employer can't legally hold it against us, but it's got to be in the back of their minds, that you could have a year deployment and be away," he says. "I'm concerned."

For many, however, the return to work is more about getting up to speed and fitting in again. For some, there is stress: Returning reservists may displace the employee who held their job in their absence, creating friction.

•	Covered by law A 1994 law ensures employees called to do military service for a stretch of less than five years have a right to: • Their jobs back. • Up to 90 days off before going back to work. • The same pension benefits as if they had never been away. Source: USA Today

"And at least I don't have people shooting at me."