Manteca, CAImagine your surprise and elation when your Golden State boss presents you with a bonus for good work, or incentives for performing an unpopular task no one else wants. You do the work, and you get what’s coming to you. California labor code is a wonderful thing.
Imagine your dismay when, after a period of time, your boss wants to take it back. Sorry, it was paid in error. Or it was a bigger incentive than you should have received. “Sorry, it was my fault,” your boss says to you. “Here’s the problem – you have to pay it back…”
You’ve already spent it. You bought a car, or renovated the house.
You’ve got to be kidding.
It seems the Pentagon was not kidding when it ordered thousands of soldiers and veterans to pay back incentives and bonuses paid to them for re-enlisting and supporting the military during the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts. One veteran was forced to repay $46,000 in re-enlistment bonuses and loans after the US Army says he should not have received them. The veteran, a resident of Manteca, had no choice but to re-mortgage his home to pay the money back.
Other veterans have been forced to send monthly payments to the Pentagon to cover the overpayments. Some live in fear of losing their homes.
Veteran’s advocates’ note that given the fact overpayments were the fault and responsibility of the military, such conduct on the military’s part and the burdens put on veterans having performed their due diligence in service to their country is in a word – shameful.
Where is the California labor code when you need it, some advocates ask?
In California, according to an investigative report in the Los Angeles Times (10/22/16), the military organization known as the California Guard offered bonus pay and incentives of $15,000 or more in order to re-enlist and serve in the Iraq and Afghanistan conflict. The military, according to the report, was short on personnel. The bonus payments and other incentives were meant to persuade military personnel to agree to additional tours of duty.
Christopher Van Meter, the 42-year-old Manteca resident who is a former captain in the Army and a veteran of the Iraq conflict, was required by the Pentagon to repay $25,000 in re-enlistment bonuses and $21,000 in student loans provided by the Army. At the time, the Army gladly coughed up the funds in order to persuade Van Meter to go back to war. Now, a decade later, the Army is claiming Van Meter should not have received those funds and demanded the money be repaid.
“These bonuses were used to keep people in,” he told the Los Angeles Times. “People like me just got screwed.”
If this happened in the private sector, would a California labor lawsuit be appropriate? Would such a claw back serve as a violation of California and labor law?
The Los Angeles Times reported that the need for military personnel was so great at the time, cash bonuses were paid up front without pre-qualifying. That qualification process was delayed, and then took five years to complete. It was then determined that thousands of soldiers who were paid bonuses and incentives to re-enlist, did not qualify under existing rules, or were otherwise approved in spite of errors in paperwork.
Thus, the decision was made to recover those funds – and the biggest hit is being felt in the State of California, which is home to one of the largest state Guard organizations with some 17,000 soldiers belonging to the California Guard.
For its part, the California Guard would prefer not to go after soldiers for overpayment of bonuses and incentives that have long been spent, through no fault of their own.
“At the end of the day, the soldiers ended up paying the largest price,” said Major General Matthew Beevers, deputy commander of the California Guard. “We’d be more than happy to absolve these people of their debts. We just can’t do it. We’d be breaking the law.”
But how does that law, whatever it is, stack up against California labor law? Pundits and veterans’ advocates openly wonder about fairness to veterans who not only enlisted to serve in a dangerous environment, many came home wounded for their efforts.
Van Meter was one of many who bore a personal cost for his service. While serving in Iraq, Van Meter was riding in an armored vehicle when it detonated a buried roadside bomb. Van Meter was thrown from the turret and sustained combat injuries, for which he was later awarded a Purple Heart.
Veterans’ advocates maintain it is improper and distasteful for the Pentagon to come after veterans for overpayments that were not of their doing, only to be left with crippling debt in spite of having served their country diligently.
Were this to come under the jurisdiction of California labor employment law, one can imagine the number of California labor lawsuits that would come to the fore.
Update, 10/26/16: After our story went live, Secretary of Defense Ash Carter announced the suspension of "all efforts to collect reimbursement" from those veterans who had been improperly awarded enlistment bonuses as members of the California National Guard. According to Carter, "I have ordered the Defense Finance and Accounting Service to suspend all efforts to collect reimbursement from affected California National Guard members, effective as soon as is practical," Carter said in a statement, adding this suspension will continue until "I am satisfied that our process is working effectively."
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