Alaska State Employee Military Leave and Reemployment

AS 39.20.340 gives a state employee who is a member of the National Guard or of a reserve component of the armed forces paid military leave of sixteen and a half days in a year. The odd figure is deliberate. Sixteen and a half days covers a standard fifteen-day annual training period plus travel, which is the pattern Alaska's distances make necessary. The leave covers training duty, field exercises, and search and rescue operations conducted under direct military control. Search and rescue is written in by name, which matters in Alaska, where the Guard flies a substantial share of the state's rescue missions and a Guard member employed by the state can be called out with no notice. The protection attached to it is the part most often left out. The employee loses no pay, no time, and no efficiency rating on account of the leave. That last one closes off the supervisor who marks an employee down for an absence the statute compelled. An additional five days of leave is available for active duty ordered by the governor, which is Alaska's state active duty and is separate from the annual allowance. A Guard member activated by the governor for a flood, a storm response or a search does not spend the sixteen and a half days on it. AS 39.20.350 handles the other end. A state employee who is a member of the National Guard or a reserve component and who is ordered to state or federal active duty must be restored to the former position afterward. This is a state-law reemployment right that sits alongside the federal one rather than replacing it. None of it displaces USERRA. The federal five-year cumulative service limit, the escalator principle, the two-year window to apply for reemployment after a service-connected disability, and health coverage continuation for up to twenty-four months all apply to Alaska state employment as they do anywhere else. What the state adds is pay during the absence, which USERRA does not require, and a state forum for the reemployment right. Alaska separately lets a vested member of the Public Employees Retirement System buy up to five years of active duty service credit, at 8.5 percent of the annualised vesting year salary for each year. That credit counts in the benefit calculation but not toward retirement eligibility, and it is unavailable where the member receives a federal benefit for the same service, with an exception that lets a retired Guard or reserve member claim active duty service.