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By Karla Browne, January 08, 2006

Last updated: Sunday, January 8, 2006 10:40 AM EST

While Capt. Anthony Callum was deployed to Iraq for 16 months with the National Guard out of Philadelphia, his partner in Carlisle Chrysler Jeep downsized another business he owns and ran the dealership by himself.

When seventh-grade social studies teacher Edward “Ted” Little, a major in the Army Reserve, was sent to Iraq this year, West Shore School District administrators pulled out the list of subs and hired one for the duration of the deployment.

The head of a contracting department at Navy Inventory Control Point takes the work off the desks of mobilized employees and spreads it among his other 150 employees.

That was also the drill at Carl Bert & Associates, a Shippensburg engineering firm, when Sgt. Ken Scott, the computer assisted drafting supervisor, responded to Hurricane Katrina with the Guard.

These employers are able to ensure that their Guard and Reserve employees come right back to the job level and benefits they left.

But not all employers have those options. And not all employers are so willing to make accommodations for their employees’ military service, says Dave Tebo, a volunteer with the National Committee for Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve (ESGR).

He intervenes

Employers often tell National Guard members they will have to use their vacation for weekend drills or annual training in the Guard. That’s forbidden in the Uniformed Services Employment and Re-employment Rights Act (USERRA), Tebo says. (See sidebar.)

Guard or Reserve members have come back from active duty and found themselves on third shift, although before deployment they were working first shift, Tebo says. “The law says you treat that individual just like they never left, so he comes back to the same job he had or one comparable.”

A reservist himself, Tebo has the task of intervening when employers in south-central Pennsylvania and deployed employees run into those issues. In 98.5 percent of his cases, he’s been able to resolve the situation without resorting to the Department of Labor.

The national success ratio is similar, ESGR officials say.

“In most cases, Tebo says, “it’s issues of misunderstanding of what the law says.”

Those misunderstandings can be on the part of the employee as well as the employer, he adds.

“In some cases you get an employee who comes out and finds out he’s lost his job and he immediately assumes that he should be placed back in that job.

“That’s only true under normal circumstances. If a company goes out of business or downsizes,” there’s nothing in the law that protects the job of a deployed employee. And that’s only fair, Tebo says. “If the position was eliminated while he was still here, the company is not obligated to give him a job.”

In ignorance of the law, some Guard members don’t take advantage of all their rights, taking vacation for annual training when they don’t need to, Tebo adds.

Working with employers

Education is a big part of Tebo’s job with ESGR.

With fact sheets, posters, handouts, brochures, bumper stickers and resource guides, ESGR volunteers try to let employers and employees know the law.

ESGR also hosts “boss lifts,” taking employers from all over the state to Fort Indiantown Gap for two days “and letting them experience what their soldiers do, the kind of training they do, the equipment they work with, the jobs they perform,” he says.

ESGR volunteers also hand out awards to outstanding employers.

In a surprise ceremony this year, about 20 employees at Carl Bert & Associates in Shippensburg gave their boss a certificate from ESGR for his “contribution to national security and protection of liberty and freedom.”

Jerry Thomason, a clerk at Carl Bert & Associates, describes how Carl Bert accepted the award: “With a great deal of humility, he said, ‘This is what every employer should do. You simply support this effort and support these individuals who are in the National Guard from a sense of duty.”’

Other employers feel the same.

“He covered us there: I covered him here,” says Walter Braithwaite, co-owner of Carlisle Chrysler Jeep, whose partner was in Iraq until a few weeks ago.

Sacrifices necessary

But losing an employee to deployment isn’t easy.

“We weren’t able to get as much done as we usually do,” says Thelma Bert, secretary and administrative head at Carl Bert & Associates. “Other people took charge” of their CAD supervisor’s work when Scott dropped everything to pass out food, water and ice in New Orleans.

“Somehow we made it through. Other people did have to work a little bit more to try to get the job done we promised,” Bert says.

Luckily, the firm had someone else to oversee computer networking, one of Scott’s former duties. “We had recognized even before it was taking too much of his time, so we had hired somebody to do that,” she says.

The Berts are used to Scott taking off three weeks each year for Guard training. But they often had wondered how they would handle an emergency mobilization.

When Katrina hit, Scott gave notice and “the next day almost he was gone,” Thelma Bert says. The deployment lasted six weeks.

“What it did say about the rest of our employees — we do have good employees who were able to pick up some of the slack,” she says.

Losing an employee to deployment is disruptive even when hiring a temporary replacement is as easy as tapping a substitute list.

Maj. Ted Little was a team leader for seventh-grade teachers at Allen Middle School in January when he got word of his deployment to Iraq, Principal Michael Goc says.

“In middle school you’re working in teaching teams across the curriculum. You need somebody that not only can work with kids but can work with other teachers,” Goc says.

While Little’s sub is doing a good job — the principal hopes to be able to hire him full-time when Little returns to an eighth-grade classroom after his tour is over — students lost a personal connection with their teacher when he left in the middle of the year, Goc says.

“Teaching is such a personal profession. The teacher is the most important person in the classroom for students’ learning.”

A matter of adjusting

A chief financial officer also is a significant person to lose to a deployment.

The partners at Carlisle Chrysler Jeep thought initially that Callum would be able to keep tabs on the financial side of the business during his deployment. Despite frequent e-mails and telephone calls, that didn’t work out.

“I would keep very much in touch with Anthony, but I didn’t want to burden him. I was pretty proud of him,” Braithwaite says in his office in the dealership on Harrisburg Pike in Middlesex Township.

With the purchase of the dealership still pending when Callum left for pre-deployment training at Fort Indiantown Gap, Braithwaite put the rest of his life on hold to ensure the success of the business, giving up drag-boat racing and leaving his family in eastern Pennsylvania to take up residence in a hotel in the Carlisle area.

“I didn’t have time to sell the house,” Braithwaite says. “My family didn’t get to move here. I have a 5-year-old son I don’t even see. I miss them unbelievably.”

A supportive and understanding wife made it possible, he says.

Callum’s family made sacrifices, too.

“We’re not big spenders,” he says in explaining how his wife and four children were able to live on his military pay for more than a year.

On average, activated Guard and Reserve personnel experience deficits of 50 percent in monthly income and medical insurance coverage for their family members during their absence, ESGR statistics show.

Some employers provide pay differential — supplementing military pay up to the amount the employee would have earned in his or her civilian position — and continue medical benefits.

Callum’s decision to live on his military income was an advantage for the dealership, Braithwaite says. “He didn’t have to take anything out of the business” as it got under way with new ownership.

Lesson brought home

A plus also came out of Little’s deployment. It provided a lesson to students throughout the school.

“The school community has just really embraced his service,” says Suzanne Tabachini, district spokeswoman.

The Allen Middle School website maintains a page for “Mr. Little,” who keeps in contact with students and faculty via e-mail.

“In years past he’s sent e-mails indicating what (Iraqi) children need and we sent care packages and even districtwide collections for his unit and the folks he may be working with in the community,” Tabachini says.

“They’ve doing a very nice job at Allen of welcoming him back. The last time he was deployed (to Bosnia) there was a wonderful welcome reception and they sent him off as well.”

Little’s deployment provides “a consistent lesson we go over with our students,” Goc says. “There’s definitely much more of an awareness by your students of the role men and women serve in safeguarding our freedom” and way of life. “We don’t take that for granted.”

NAVICP employees also stayed in touch when a co-worker, 1st Lieutenant Dave Light, was deployed to Iraq this year.

Light is one of four employees who have been mobilized since 2002 from a contracting department at the Hampden Township Navy supply depot.

“They range from an officer who was in Iraq for two separate tours to a civilian who in his Reserve duties was an officer in the Army,” says Robert Barnhart, deputy director of contracting for maritime sites.

“On two separate occasions we sent large care packages from his co-workers, with candy and toys for Iraqi children and snacks, Handiwipes, and other personal items for the U.S. soldiers.”

Barnhart took the time to keep in close contact by telephone and e-mail.

“We even helped them in a couple of occasions” by providing “tools” for contract work in reconstruction of Iraqi communities, he says.

Leadership learned

Perhaps the biggest advantage of an employee’s deployment to a business is the experience that active duty provides, Tebo says.

“Within a matter of four to five years an enlisted soldier can become a sergeant — that is, a first-line supervisor responsible for five to 10 soldiers — employees,” Tebo says. “He or she is responsible for individual training, training them as a team, and is also responsible to make sure they’re fed, clothed, paid and responsible for all of their equipment.

“Where in the civilian world would somebody with a high school education be at work with a company for five years and be a first-line supervisor for 10 people?

“That is routine in the military, and those leadership skills are not left behind in the Reserve center when the soldier comes back to work on Monday.”

FYI

What’s the difference between the Guard and the Reserve?

“The Army Reserve is a federal force, with a reporting chain up through the president. The National Guard is a state force. Each state has its own National Guard,” explains Dave Tebo, South Central Pennsylvania committee chairman for Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve.

Reservists may be fulfilling an obligation upon discharge from active duty or as a result of accepting college scholarships through the Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC).

“Guard members report to their respective governor,” Tebo says, “but they can be mobilized by the president, federalized and brought into a national emergency. Then they report through their chain of command to the president.”