Hey there, Dustin Paschal with Simon Paschal PLLC again. We are in the middle of getting ready for the 75th anniversary of the HR Southwest Conference. Putting together our pre-con materials, so we’ve got stuff all over the table. We will be giving five speeches in four days, so a bit of a marathon process we’ve got to go through. We’re taking a quick break for all of you that are preparing for the conference, and even those that aren’t, to give you our legal tip of the week, our video legal tip.
Today we’re going to talk about something that’s in our pre-con presentation, which is USERRA, the Uniform Services Employment and Reemployment Act. It involves the military service and employers are required to give unpaid leave to military personnel who have to go perform military service. As long as those personnel have not exceeded five years of that leave with a single employer, the employer has to give them that unpaid leave. In addition to giving them that unpaid leave, they’ve got to give them the right to reemployment following the lead.
The military personnel have to do a few things, which is to give advanced notice, either written or verbal. Then as soon as their military leave is over, they’ve got to either return to work or reapply to return to work in a reasonable fashion. They can’t have been discharged from the military in some form or fashion that’s other than an honorable discharge. As long as they comply with those things, then the employer is required to re-employ the employee in the same or equivalent position.
One last thing on that is for a period of up to 24 months, the military personnel employee has the right to continue health insurance coverage at his or her cost. If they elect not do that for that 24 month period, then they have the right to get back on the plan as soon as they come back.
That’s your tip on USERRA for all of our employers out there. We’re going to get back to work to compiling everything we’ve got for the HR Southwest conference in Fort Worth coming up starting Sunday. We hope to see you there and thanks for listening.