By Jennifer 8. Lee
The federal government sued New York City on Thursday on behalf of an Iraq war veteran who says he was denied a promotion in the city’s Department of Correction because he was on active duty when promotions were being considered.
The veteran, Emilio Pennes, is a lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve, and has worked for the Correction Department since 1987. According to the complaint, he applied for a promotion to deputy warden shortly before he was activated for duty in 2007. He was unable to attend a promotion interview in person, and so was passed over for the promotion even though he had been ranked first in an internal selection memo, the complaint said.
On a previous tour of duty in 2004 and 2005, he served in Iraq, near Tikrit.
Stephen Morello, a spokesman for the Correction Department, said, “We are proud of and grateful to the many members of the department who serve in the military, and we will be happy to place Mr. Pennes to be at the top of the list of people to be interviewed for the deputy warden position he seeks.”
Mr. Pennes’s is one of a number of cases which have arisen under the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act of 1994, which protects people who have served in the military while they continue their civilian careers.
Earlier this month, a Michigan company called Ecolab agreed to pay $118,000 to settle another veteran’s case brought by the Department of Justice in federal court in Detroit. That veteran, Stephen Alasin, said he had not been hired after returning from active service.
In March, an Air Force reservist, Michael Serricchio, won almost $1 million in a lawsuit he filed against Wachovia Bank because his job had been eliminated in a merger while he was on active duty.
Aaron Maduff, a Chicago-area lawyer who specializes in veterans’ employment cases, said most were settled out of court. Mr. Maduff said that he had handled perhaps 100 cases, and that only about two or three went so far as a court filing.
Rather soon in a case, he said, he often gets a call from the employer saying, “We’re putting him back to work,” Mr. Maduff said. “That’s very, very common. One of the reasons it’s very common is the law is very solid on the employee situation.”
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