Alaska Private Employer Veterans Preference

AS 23.88.010 provides that when hiring an employee, a private employer may grant an employment preference to a listed group. The verb is may, so this is authority for the employer rather than a right for the applicant. The list is wider than the equivalent statute in most states in this catalog. It reaches a person who is active in, furloughed from, or honorably discharged from the armed forces of the United States, the reserves, the Alaska Territorial Guard, or a state military unit. Currently serving members are inside it, which most state private-preference statutes do not do, and so is a furloughed member. It reaches the spouse or dependent child of such a person. And it reaches the surviving spouse or dependent child of a service member who has died. A dependent child is defined as a natural, step or adopted child who is either permanently disabled, or under nineteen, or under twenty-three and a full-time student at an accredited institution. What the section does not contain is the interesting part. There is no requirement that the policy be in writing. There is no requirement that it be applied consistently. And there is no provision declaring that the preference is not a violation of state equal employment opportunity law, which is the shield that Kansas and Tennessee both wrote into their equivalents. Alaska grants the authority and says nothing about the consequences of exercising it, which leaves an employer to rely on the grant itself. There is no remedy for an applicant. Nothing requires an employer to adopt a preference, and a veteran passed over by an employer that has one has no claim under this section. For a veteran the practical use is in asking. An employer that has decided to prefer veterans will normally say so in the posting, and the breadth of this section means a spouse or a college-age child of a service member can ask about it too, which is not true in most states.