Department of Labor Publishes USERRA Notice Just Before the Deadline

Last December, the President signed into law the Veterans Benefits Improvement Act, which made two changes in the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act ("USERRA") regarding the rights of employees called to military service. Those changes were described in our Benefits Alert published on January 3, 2005. One of the changes was a new requirement that employers provide a notice to employees of their rights and duties under USERRA beginning today, March 10th. All employers, regardless of size, have to comply with this requirement.

Yesterday, the Department of Labor released an "interim final rule" that contains sample text for the notice. A copy of that notice is available today on the DOL/VETS web page. You can satisfy your notice obligation by posting copies of the Department's notice in each location that is customarily used for similar notices to your employees (such as EEO posters). If you prefer, the rules allow you to provide the notice in other ways which assure that each employee receives the full text of the notice, such as by hand delivery, by mail or by e-mail. However, most employers will probably just post the notice. Note that all of your employees (and all future employees) have to get the notice, not just those known to be in the military.

The Department obviously failed to give employers an adequate time to get the notice posted by the March 10th deadline. However, the Department noted in the preamble to its rules that it lacks the authority to delay enforcement of this requirement, because USERRA can be enforced by private suit and by two other federal agencies. Thus, you should attempt to get the notice posted (or distributed to your employees by some other means) as soon as possible.