Military Leave

Margie · September 2001

I received the article on military leave. We just have one question. We know that employees don't have to use their PTO if they don't want to but if they are gone for a long period time let's say two years, do they keep accumulating PTO leave as if they were still here?

Gar · September 2001

Based on my new understanding of the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act (USERRA), employees on active duty continue to accrue seniority. Therefore, if PTO is connected to seniority they continue to accumulate it.

Down_the_Middle · September 2001

Don't forget to check your state laws for specific things that may be more generous than USERRA. Many states have provisions that are activated in the event of declared War(e.g. continuing all insurance coverages at the same payroll deduction rate as if actively employed......)

Marie · September 2001

The way I understand the continued accrual of benefits is: an employee gets two weeks vacation for the first three year; after three years the employee gets three weeks of vacation time, then any employee who had worked for a year and then went on a two year military duty would be entitled to the three weeks when they returned. They wouldn't accrue an additional four weeks during the active duty.

Margie · September 2001

Marie,

Can you tell me where you got that info from.

System · September 2001

OK, I think I've figured it out now. Here goes:

First of all, there's the question of whether an employee accrues PTO while on military leave. In other words, can he return after five years and demand the 15 weeks of PTO that he accrued while he was overseas? If your company policy says "no," then USERRA will allow you to say no.

But your vacation policy must be the same for someone on military leave as someone who's on leave for another purpose. If employees accumulate vacation time while on sick leave, then you have to let military employees accumulate vacation time the same way. But if your policy is that employees on leave DON'T accumulate vacation time, then you can apply this policy to an employee on military leave.

The second issue is the RATE at which employees accrue vacation, which usually is based on seniority. While on military leave, USERRA says an employee continues to gain seniority and all the rights that seniority brings.

For example, let's say your policy says that employees accrue vacation time of 8 hours a month if they have less than three years of seniority; 10 hours a month with three or more years. An employee with 2.9 years of seniority goes on active military duty for one year. When he returns from leave, he begins to accrue leave at a rate of 10 hours per month. But he doesn't have 12 days of accrued vacation time waiting for him (unless your company policy gives them to him).

I got this information from the U.S. Department of Labor's Veterans' Employment and Training Service. They have an interactive website that answers questions about USERRA. It's at [url]http://www.dol.gov/elaws/userra0.htm[/url]. This particular answer is at [url]http://www.elaws.dol.gov/userra/wren/benefits/ben_vaca.htm[/url].

And here's a website from the National Committee of Employer Support for the Guard and Reserve, which is an arm of the U.S. Department of Defense. [url]http://www.esgr.org/tipsemployers.html[/url].

For those of you who didn't read the article Margie is referring to, it's at
[url]http://www.hrhero.com/headlines/tragedy.shtml[/url]

James Sokolowski
Senior Editor
M. Lee Smith Publishers

Military Leave

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