Bracing for the Call of Duty

With the reserves making up half the U.S. armed forces, civilian employers are girding for the imminent loss of as many as 35,000 citizen soldiers called to assist the anti-terrorism campaign.

Despite recent layoffs, some employers may have trouble finding people with the right skills willing to fill in temporarily, said Jim Kuns, a senior consultant for the Employers Group, a Los Angeles organization representing 5,000 California companies.

“If they are a really needed employee, who is going to fill in?” Kuns said. “Where are you going to get those people from? During World War II, that was one of the biggest problems. That helped usher women into the work force. Women aren’t there to fill in, so now what are they going to do?”

Already, police and sheriffs’ departments in Los Angeles, New York and Washington have expressed concern that the effort will bleed their ranks at a time when they can least afford it. With much of the military’s medical capabilities assigned to reserve units, hospitals stand to lose doctors, nurses and medical technicians.

About 5% of federal government workers are reservists. Among private employers, the level of participation varies. In all, 1.3 million members of the armed forces are in the reserves.

“If you are Ford Motor Co. or Microsoft and you lose five or six people, you can work around it,” said Jayson Spiegel, executive director of the Washington-based Reserve Officers Assn. “If you are a small company and you lose five or six people or your chief financial officer, that can [have] a devastating impact.”

The ongoing rotation of reservists out of civilian jobs to Bosnia for 270-day tours of duty has helped many employers get used to losing workers to military duty.

The role of the reserves has grown exponentially since Operation Desert Storm in 1991. More than 250,000 activated reservists contributed 1 million duty days toward that effort. Today, between regular training and military actions such as Bosnia, reservists put in 13 million duty days a year.

Although there are 40% fewer reservists today than during the Persian Gulf War, they have become a more significant part of the nation’s fighting force, said Lt. Col. Michael H. Lovitt, a spokesman for the National Committee for Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve, known as ESGR. Since the mid-1990s, the reserves have constituted about half the membership of the total armed forces.

Depending on the duration and scope of the response to the terrorist attacks, the campaign could test the nation’s willingness to staff its military with part-timers.

“Unfortunately, it took this episode to realize how important the National Guard and Reserve is to the military strategy,” Lovitt said.

The ESGR was created in 1972 to encourage employers to support an increasingly volunteer military as the draft was phased out and is the military’s primary liaison with private employers. It went on 24-hour-a-day, 7-day-a-week duty Sept. 14.

The Arlington, Va.-based federal agency maintains a network of ombudsmen throughout the country with whom reservists and employers can work out conflicts between work and military duties. More serious disputes are adjudicated by a special arm of the Department of Labor.

Reservists can nominate employers for ESGR’s My Boss Is a Patriot awards. And the agency arranges “Bosslifts”--tours to educate employers about the roles their reservist workers play.

Since President Bush approved the activation of 35,000 reservists, hits on the agency’s Web site, at https://www.esgr.org, have more than quadrupled, and calls to its toll-free telephone line, (800) 336-4590, also have increased.

Employers and reservists are calling with questions about what is required by the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act. Among other things, the law obligates companies to retain workers called for as long as five years of active duty.

“A smart business will have a plan, knowing that one of their key employees is a reservist,” said Spiegel of the Reserve Officers Assn. “Ten years ago, during the Persian Gulf War, a lot of people worked overtime or they brought in a temp where that made sense. During the Gulf call-up, the business community was nowhere near as prepared as they are today.”

Spiegel was an attorney at a law firm with 40 other reservists when the call came to assist in the Persian Gulf effort. Five members of the firm were activated, including Spiegel, who spent 11 months monitoring security at U.S. ports along the East Coast.

On Sept. 11, when the hijacked plane plowed into the Pentagon, Spiegel was headed to the complex to pull his monthly reserve shift as an intelligence analyst. He was diverted to another location and was put to work for three days.

“As a reservist, I don’t consider myself a backup plan or a sub coming off the bench,” he said. “We’re starters in the war plans because there are some skills that don’t exist on the active-duty side.”

Some companies go beyond the legal requirements. Of 119 Fortune 500 companies that responded to a survey by the Reserve Officers Assn. this year, 75 offer some compensation for the difference between military and civilian pay.

United Parcel Service Inc., which employs 4,000 to 5,000 reservists, said it will pay the full difference between military and civilian pay, as it did during the Gulf War.

“We feel a real responsibility to our employees and to the nation that our employees are taken care of and they don’t have financial concerns while they are serving,” spokeswoman Paula Fulford said.