Originally Posted by
sigtauenus
I heard third hand something about a guy who was with SWA, did the reserve thing once a month, missed too many trips with SWA during his first year there and they fired him. After a lawyer and court got involved, he's back at SWA, and is "happy as can be" or something to that affect.
Regardless of the protections afforded reservists, how does the industry overall view guys who get hired, then go off for reserve duty not long after being hired, and then come back 90, 180, 360 days later? At this point in my career, I'd be crazy to not take the reserve retirment, and it would be fairly easy for me to get hired by a regional, jump in with a reserve unit and get activated for 90 or 180 days, perhaps more, and then go back to the regional with a little bit more seniority. I would consider that gaming the game, and assume the airlines see through that as well, even if legally there's not much they can do about it.
I guess what I'm getting at is that, legally, they could wait the 5 years required by law to fire me, and then when I try to get another job, I find myself blackballed...
It's REAL hard to fire a reservist for being gone...they can't fire you just for being gone, and if you're not there it's pretty hard for you to do something that WOULD justify firing you.
The five year limit has NUMEROUS exclusions...
- Initial military training
- Initial and follow on skill training
- Drill weekends
- Annual Training
- Involuntary Recalls (even if you volunteer, the orders will normally be written as "involuntary" to protect you)
- Contingency operations (almost anything that any branch of the armed services has done since 12SEP2001 counts as contingency)
- Other stuff I'm forgetting.
Don't worry about the five year thing, it will never apply.
Like Slice said, It would be better form to complete training and fly the line for a while before leaving, but if that's not practical, oh well. Don't inconvenience yourself for a regional... they don't have your best interests at heart in most cases, so do what's best for you. Who has the better retirement? See my point?