Bad PR Move, at Least

From Stars and Stripes:

NAVAL STATION ROTA, Spain ? Seabee Petty Officer Second Class Erik Balodis once hoped to retire at the company he grew to love.

But those aspirations were crushed when automotive parts retail giant Pep Boys fired him in June 2002 after he returned from Navy Reserve training.

Company executives contend they laid him off because of poor performance. But Balodis claims the retail chain sacked him because of his military service. He is suing the company for $5 million in lost wages and punitive damages, but hopes the lawsuit will help others.

?If nothing else, it?s going to send a tremendous lesson to the work force and also mostly to Pep Boys to save maybe more people that this might have been happening to,? said Balodis, who is in southern Spain for annual Reserve training.

His case has attracted some headlines and put greater attention on worker rights as the military leans heavily on reservists and Guardsmen to help fight the war on terrorism and rebuild Iraq. The battle also has spawned concerns that companies might penalize some of the tens of thousands of part-time soldiers when they return to their full-time jobs.

The lawsuit alleges that Pep Boys fired Balodis because his Reserve duties kept him from his job as a district manager in Tucson, Ariz., adding that the retail chain pressured him to choose between his military service and work.

Hours after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, the company reportedly sent a letter to the Navy requesting that Balodis not be called up because he was too important. When Balodis returned from a Navy exercise on June 27, 2002, the company fired him for ?job abandonment.?

Pep Boys spokesman Bill Furtkevic called the accusations by Balodis ?preposterous.?

Furtkevic said that the American Legion awarded the company for its support of the military and that more than 25 reservist employees were deployed.

?The whole allegation is just appalling to my organization,? he said. ?The founders of my company were World War I buddies who pulled together their money to start this company. The president of our company is retired U.S. Army. The CEO of our company was a Canadian military paratrooper. The fact that someone would believe we would terminate an employee because of their military obligation is preposterous.?

Perhaps so. But the timing is certainly not good. There's more in the full article here.