ing nearly 55,000 reservists and members of the National Guard. When soldiers are deployed, many arrangements must be made. These men and women leave their jobs, their families, and even their children behind.

As the Congressional Representative for the Niagara Falls Air Reserve Station, I have seen the enormous disruption and burden that deployment places on the families of these men and women. I have also seen the grace with which these families accept the many challenges presented to them.

As an institution, Congress has long recognized the need to minimize the hardships to these soldiers and their families, as demonstrated in the Servicemember's Civil Relief Act, which my bill would amend. It is important for us to recognize that this comprehensive law, first enacted in 1940, never anticipated lengthy deployments by fathers and mothers in the reserve and the Guard. It never anticipated a time when both parents might be deployed to an overseas theater. And it certainly did not anticipate a time when our nation's divorce rate would reach nearly 50 percent, a fact that creates new challenges for deployed parents. Today, the citizen soldiers called up for active duty may have no choice but to send their children to live with the other parent, another relative, or someone who lives one or two towns away or even further.

Obviously, a parent's absence creates many voids in a child's life. Whether it's a missing father who regularly cheered on his little leaguer, or a mother who was always there to help out with the algebra homework, the absence of these parents is felt every day in small moments in these young lives. We cannot possibly realize the aggregate impact that a parent's absence can have. Having to start at a new school, make new friends, and adjust to new demands should not be added to the many hardships experienced by these children.

Last summer, I learned firsthand how deployment causes significant upheaval in a child's life. I was informed that a 10th grader in my district-and all of us who have been parents or grandparents know that's a tricky age-was being forced out of her school system when her father left for Iraq. She, naturally, went to live at her mother's home in the next town. At a time of great disruption, this event caused considerable stress to the hardships my constituent and her family were experiencing.

This instance, and others like it, demonstrates the need for federal legislation requiring that school districts allow the children to remain enrolled in their home district if they wish, while they reside outside the district because a parent is deployed. I am pleased that a handful of states have already enacted provisions offering this protection. The Safeguarding Schoolchildren of Deployed Soldiers Act would ensure it is offered on the national level.

The Military Officers Association of America and the National Military Family Association support this bill as a common sense solution to a problem by ensuring that more American military children have continuity in their education and in their lives.

I strongly urge the committee to approve The Safeguarding Schoolchildren of Deployed Soldiers Act. We owe this protection to our children and to their families, and to the peace of mind of the soldier, which is a very important part of what we do here.

And, Mr. Chairman and other members of this committee, I thank you for your kind consideration of this measure.

The CHAIRMAN. Thanks very much, Ms. Slaughter, for your testimony, and we appreciate you coming by.

Mr. Evans, do you have any comments?
We just thank you, and I appreciate it.

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Thank you all very much. And please forgive me. I'm sorry to interrupt.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Ciccolella?

STATEMENT OF CHARLES CICCOLELLA

Mr. CICCOLELLA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Evans. Thank you for holding today's hearing, and thank you for inviting the Department of Labor to testify in this important law.

I'll focus my comments this morning on several areas of particular interest to the committee. Overall, we believe at the Department of Labor that we're doing a very good job with enforcing this important law. We take the responsibility for enforcing USERRA very, very seriously.

The number of USERRA cases has gone up since September 11th of 2001. Since that time, we've experienced an overall increase of about 45 percent, which would put us on track for about 1,400 actual cases this year. However, the increase that we're seeing is not really proportional to the numbers of men and women who have been activated under the current mobilization, nearly 400,000, nor by comparison to the increases that we saw during the first Persian Gulf war. And keep in mind that many of the reservists and guardsmen who were called up today are being called up for longer periods of time, up to two years.

There are three reasons there has not been a larger increase in the complaints. First of all, the enactment of USERRA strengthened the protections for servicemembers and it strengthened the ability of Department of Labor vets to enforce the law.

Secondly, under Secretary Chao, we have a very aggressive compliance assistance program to employers and employees. So we are not only talking about enforcement, we're talking about educating employers about these important laws.

And thirdly, the response from employers has been very supportive and very positive, with many, many employers going above and beyond the call of duty, obviously notwithstanding those egregious cases that we all have heard today.

Now with regard to the specific focus of this hearing, which is public service employees, between 30 and 35 percent of the USERRA cases are against government employees. Federal cases make up 10 to 14 percent of those cases, and state and local cases make up about 20 percent.

Our investigators have been very effective at investigating these complaints and resolving them when we open cases, but our goal is to resolve the problems before they become complaints. That is why we have a tremendous emphasis on our compliance assistance program.

Since September of 2001, we've responded to thousands of requests for information, technical requests regarding USERRA from employers and members of Congress, from guardsmen and reserv

ists and so forth. We've delivered briefings to over 150,000 individuals and presentations. That includes an awful lot of guardsmen and reservists. And keep in mind that ESGR and the military also conduct these briefings.

The longer tours of duty have introduced a more complex range of USERRA issues. In fact, employers and servicemembers are now asking not only about issues of discrimination and reinstatement, but today they're more concerned with things like layoffs, reorganizations that occur during a period of duty, missed pay raises, either seniority or merit-based, reinstatement of health care benefits, pensions, et cetera.

As we consider these cases, we are always guided by two underlying principles that underlie reemployment rights in this country since 1940. First, we construe the USERRA law liberally to the benefit of the servicemember, and secondly, we enforce the escalator principle, which says that the individual should be reinstated in the position he would have had but for the military service.

What we've learned has been codified now into regulations, and those regulations, Mr. Chairman, are now at OMB, and we expect to see them in the Federal Register in September of 2004.

We have an aggressive outreach program, as I said. I think the committee is familiar with our elaws resource adviser, and also with the outreach we've made to numerous organizations, including the ABA and the HR policy organizations.

Mr. Chairman, the Department of Labor supports both H.R. 3779 and H.R. 4477. With regard to the extension od health care coverage to 24 months, we are supportive of that, and we've offered to the committee assistance in clarifying those provisions. And with regard to the reinstitution of the report on the USERRA cases, in the part we found that report to be helpful, so we obviously would defer to Justice and Special Counsel for their views.

Mr. Chairman, at the Department of Labor we believe that every military member serving our nation, particularly those activated guardsmen and reservists today, deserve to know their employment rights are protected. The Department of Labor is committed to informing employers about USERRA and we're committed to protecting the employment and reemployment rights of our citizen soldiers and veterans.

That concludes my oral statement. I'd be happy to answer any questions.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Ciccolella appears on p. 150.] The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much. Secretary Duehring.

STATEMENT OF CRAIG W. DUEHRING

Mr. DUEHRING. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, thank you for giving me the opportunity to come before you to discuss several proposed improvements to the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act and the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act.

The Department of Defense supports enactment of the Servicemembers Legal Protection Act of 2004, which would amend several provisions of the SCRA to reflect our experience with the SCRA during its first six months. Each proposed amendment in the draft bill addresses a problem that has been encountered by

servicemembers and brought to the attention of the Department through the legal assistance programs of the military services.

Legal assistance attorneys play a key role in ensuring that servicemembers are able to fully exercise the rights and protections afforded by the SCRA, and we have been attentive to their experiences during this initial shakedown period under the new law.

The Department passed on its concerns and recommendations to your staff, and you have responded expeditiously with this draft bill and this hearing. I commend and thank the committee and its staff for this impressive responsiveness to the needs of our servicemembers.

With respect to H.R. 3779, The Safeguarding Schoolchildren of Deployed Soldiers Act of 2004, we note that we are not aware of the situation that the bill addresses is at all widespread or merits federal legislation. In fact, it has not come to our attention through legal assistance or reserve component channels.

Since the global war on terrorism and the ongoing reserve mobilization began, these channels have proved extremely effective in identifying deployment-related problems servicemembers and their families are experiencing. This leads us to believe that the incidence of children of deployed servicemembers suddenly being treated as nonresidents of school districts where they have previously been considered residents may be isolated to no more than a few school districts, and that to the extent it exists, this problem may be better addressed at the state level than through federal legislation.

The Department of Defense supports Section 2 of the draft USERRA Health Care Coverage Extension Act of 2004, increasing from 18 months to 24 months the maximum period of employer provided health care plan coverage that an employee covered by USERRA may elect to continue is an important amendment that will align this coverage period with the length of time for which reservists can be mobilized under the current mobilization authority. We defer to the Department of Labor on Section 3 of the draft bill, which would reinstate the requirement for a comprehensive annual report on the disposition of cases filed under USERRA.

The Department also defers to the Department of Labor on Section 2 of H.R. 4477, The Patriotic Employer Act of 2004, which would require employers to post notice of USERRA rights, benefits and obligations in the place of employment of individuals protected by that Act.

I would again like to thank the committee and its staff for all your efforts on behalf of our servicemembers. The Department of Defense appreciates any opportunity to discuss these important matters with you. And I do have a written statement we've submitted earlier, which I hope will be included.

[The prepared statement of Secretary Duehring appears on p. 159.]

The CHAIRMAN. Secretary Duehring, thanks very much. Without objection, your statement and that of all of our witnesses will be made a part of the record.

Mr. DUEHRING. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you so much. Col. Cox.

STATEMENT OF COL. BRARRY COX

Col. Cox. Chairman Smith, members of the committee, I am Colonel Brarry Cox, the Director of Ombudsman Services for the National Committee for Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve, ESGR.

Thank you for the opportunity to come before you this morning. I have furnished a written statement and would like it entered into the record as if read, and I will keep my remarks brief.

ESGR is a Department of Defense volunteer organization whose mission is to gain and maintain support from all public and private employers for the men and women of the National Guard and Reserve as defined by demonstrated employer commitment to employee military service.

We accomplish this mission through a three-pronged approach. First, we strive to increase public awareness of the important mission of our National Guard and Reserve. We do this through public relations and media events such as the Rose Bowl parade and our current partnership with NASCAR. More importantly, we aim to convey the importance of employer support to the national defense. In the long term, I think we are all well aware that the Guard and Reserve could not continue to be successful partners in the global war on terror without the continued support of our nation's employ

ers.

The second way that ESGR accomplishes its mission is through activities that help employers manage their Guard and Reserve employees. Ultimately, we want employers to create a work environment that is friendly to Guard and Reserve employees. We help them to do that by encouraging the creation and sustainment of human resource policies that not only consider military service but support it. In some cases, we even arrange activities so that the employer can visit their employees during military training.

I can say that employers I have spoken with consistently walk away from these activities thoroughly impressed with the professionalism of the Guard and Reserve members and are more committed to do their part to ensure that their military employees serve with the minimum amount of disruption in their civilian ca

reers.

We have found that overall support from civilian employers has been exemplary. But we do occasionally have problems. ESGR focuses the third prong of its approach in this area. We call this the ombudsman service of ESGR. For nearly 28 years, the ombudsman service has functioned to provide information and informal mediation service between military service members and their employers. In fiscal year 2003, the ombudsman service worked almost 22,000 inquiries nationwide regarding military service. These inquiries were answered through a 1-800 hotline, customer service center staff, and a nationwide volunteer network.

Most of these inquiries were simply requests for information form both employees and employers. Nonetheless, a significant number represented workplace conflicts between servicemembers and their civilian employers. In these cases, we aim to resolve the conflict in a low key and informal manner, and at the lowest possible level, and short of formal enforcement action. Historically, our success rate exceeds 90 percent.