Madia Represents Service Members who leave their jobs for Active Duty
As a member of the United States Uniformed Services, if you need to be absent from your job in order to serve your country, you are entitled to reinstatement into the same or a similar position and you are entitled to the rate of pay and benefits you would have received had you remained continuously employed. Additionally, employers are not allowed to discriminate or retaliate against you because you have decided to serve the U.S. military. We represent veterans and other service members that have been denied their entitlements upon returning to work or have been discriminated or retaliated against because of their service.
Representative Cases
“Allen” worked for a large, Chicago-based company with operations in Minnesota for 7 months. He gave his employer notice in his sixth month that the he was being deployed to Djibouti to serve in Operation Enduring Freedom for 1 year. He told his employer that, upon his return from deployment, he intended to return to employment with them.
Before deploying, Allen made $15 per hour and was a “level one” employee. When Allen returned from deployment, the company attempted to avoid its obligations under the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act (USERRA) by paying Allen $15.75 per hour and kept him a level one employee. This is in spite of the fact that all of Allen’s peers made at least $20 per hour and all of the employees with whom Allen started were now “level two” employees. The employer argued that, had Allen remained continuously employed with the company, he would have made no more than $15.75 per hour and would not have become a level 2 employee, despite having no evidence to support their argument.
Madia Law represented Allen and filed suit. After 2-years aggressively litigating the case against a stubborn company that refused to admit it had done wrong, Madia Law obtained a favorable settlement for Allen on the eve of trial.
