hey pitts,
Sorry that is happening to you brother, but honestly: welcome to the often unspoken opportunity cost to the Guard/Reserves. Sorry for the long winded response, but this topic is a pet peeve of mine because it has touched me personally many times since I stopped being a college student. This bag full of perennially-repeating crap of a situation is why I troughed in my younger years and made the Reserves my full-time career instead of dealing with the BS machinations of having to appease two bosses, particularly 9-5 civilian employers.
The bottom line is that you'll have a hell of a time proving you were being terminated due to your military participation. My point to you is that even if you were intent on making a point by pursuing legal action, it doesn't appear as though your current gig is worth sticking around for anyways (judging by your airline aspirations). Frankly, I would have kept my mouth shut about the whole Guard/Reserve thing until you actually had the bird in the hand. Now, as it stands, without formal Guard participation, they could cut you and you'd never be able to argue USERRA. Again, I wouldn't want to work for a place I had to raise USERRA in order to keep my job in the first place.
Aircrew participation in the guard/reserve has always been largely incompatible with non-airline employment. 9-5 employers are the pits when it comes to guard/reserve participation that involves positions which require more than the 48UTA/14AT (i.e. nonner AFSCs). Hell ,even some fractionals like XOJET are giving one of our TRs a hard time and had to get schooled on the deal. I'm glad they seem to be turning a corner but again, I wouldn't want to work for a place that was combative about my military duty. I have stories for days about the scores of employers who groaned about my expanded Reserve participation requirements in the context of attempting to get a job with them back when I was a starving 2Lt trying to figure out what the hell I wanted to do to put food on the table for a living for the next 30 years. I'm frankly much better off having bummed/troughed instead of having worked for them. I make a hell of a lot more and with better benefits on the mil side. I'm also on track to a dignified retirement as opposed to the joke that is a 401k in a Country of decreasing National Median wage.
As far as your situation, personally I would have never allowed such a long break in service after separating from AD, but I respect that everybody has their personal reasons for doing what they do. I don't blame ya for not looking at the reserve side of your prior MWS (I'm right there with ya). That said, I understand you need to keep your turbine recency and the RPA gig won't do that for you. What the RPA will do is get you PAID, and stay local. That's the bottom line. When you do get picked up by mainline, these issues will go away. The bigger the employer, the less the issues that arise with Reserve aircrew participation. Which is why airline work is the only kind of civilian employment I'd actually consider if I ever chose to endure the kabuki of stroking two bosses.
Forget the money for a second, get yourself a mickey mouse regional job and mil drop the snot out of it with the RPA gig. I know a guy who's not even been at XJT for 6 months and he's already hiding in guam making the kind of cheese that actually covers bills and family life. I mean, this whole pantomime is a known quantity and the regional could care less. Personally, if I had a manned TR gig I wouldn't even mess with a regional, but I digress.
Keep the currency that way and thus afford yourself the mainline waiting game. Forget the machinations of small employers. If that is truly where you wanted to build lasting roots in, you wouldn't be pursuing reserve work in the first place, even under the guise of salvaging your prior active duty time for Res retirement at 60.
Good luck man. I hope things turn for ya on the airline front soon.
Quote:
Originally Posted by F4E Mx
In today's economy 45 to 55 hour workweeks are not uncommon in the civilian world. If a guardsman is a professional engineer, for example, and has numerous projects in work, his coworkers have to try and pull his weight during his guard absence. After several years of doing so his coworkers might get a little tired of it.
When I interviewed for an assistant professorship (tenure track) at a undisclosed 4-year college in the SE, the expectation became that they really could care less what I did with my weekends, but M-F bankers hours were sacrosanct to them. The joke? I made more part-time as a trougher LT flying the bomber on my own custom Burger King schedule than what I would've made commuting to this BS civilian job with a 6 year (that's right, 6 year) tenure probationary period plus whatever chicken scratch I would have made min running the unit on the weekends. Yeah buddy.
That's when the light went on in my head and said to myself, we're fudged as a Country when a part-time worker in the military can make a living wage and a full time college teacher can't beat it. So to address what I bolded above:
Whatever. The game is Chess, it ain't checkers. Daddy's gotta get paid. I don't have the time to be a martyr and run around like a chicken with the head cut off, self-righteous delict claim in one hand and a coffee-stained copy of USERRA in my backpocket. In the words of John Reuben:
Make money money Make money money monAY!