Every Veterans Day, Americans come together to thank those who have served our country. Those words matter. But our gratitude should mean more than a thank you.
When our country asks you to step away from your civilian job to serve in the National Guard or Reserve, you shouldn’t have to start over in civilian life every time duty calls. Returning home also means returning to a job, career, and family responsibilities that did not stop while you were away.
I spent more than 20 years in the Marine Corps and later had the privilege of working on behalf of service members and veterans at the Departments of Defense and Labor. The service members and veterans I know understand sacrifice, and they know what it means to spend time away from home, miss important moments, and ask more of the people they love.
When you come home, you should be able to resume the life you put on hold, not find yourself further behind because you served.
To ease your transition, federal law offers many protections for your civilian job and career, including something called differential pay for federal employees whose military pay falls short of their civilian pay.
The idea behind differential pay is simple: Serving your country shouldn’t mean taking a pay cut. Since 2009, federal law has provided this protection to qualifying federal civilian employees called to active military duty.
But for years, the federal government said that differential pay was available only for certain deployments directly tied to a national emergency.
Last year, the Supreme Court rejected that interpretation. Essentially, if you were called to active duty during a national emergency, your deployment didn’t have to be connected to that emergency for you to qualify for differential pay. That’s important, because the country has been in some form of national emergency since 2001.
The bottom line – if you’ve been called to active duty while working as a federal employee, you may qualify for differential pay.
A class action now pending in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims seeks to recover unpaid differential pay for federal employees who served in the Guard and Reserve. Importantly, to be eligible for compensation, you must “opt-in,” or affirmatively tell the court that you want to be paid fairly. Under this lawsuit, many thousands of service members may be eligible to receive
money they rightfully earned.
But the larger lesson goes beyond any one lawsuit. If you’ve served, you already know that answering the call requires sacrifice. Losing money that
you’ve earned shouldn’t be one of those sacrifices. You stepped away from your civilian job and from your family to serve in the National Guard or Reserve, and you may be owed money for that service.
This Veterans Day, let’s do more than thank the people who served. Let’s stand behind that gratitude and get the word out that there are options for our servicemen and women to protect their livelihoods.
To opt-into this class action, or for more information, please visit militarydiffpay.com, email militarydiffpay@outtengolden.com, or call the firm at (202) 769-3825.
James D. Rodriguez has previously served as Assistant Secretary for the Department of Labor’s Veterans’ Employment and Training Service, and as Deputy Assistant Secretary at the Department of Defense, where he shaped national policy and legislation for active duty service members and veterans. He currently serves as Director of Strategic Engagement and Partnerships at Outten & Golden LLP, which represents class members in Platero v. United States.
