Restoration to an American Samoa Government Job After Active Duty

American Samoa has no National Guard, but it does have Army Reserve detachments and one of the highest rates of military service of any place under the U.S. flag. A career service employee called up is a common situation, and there are two bodies of law on it. The territorial rule is Code section 7.0208, enacted in 1971. An individual employed in the career service who is ordered to active or reserve duty in the armed forces of the United States "is entitled within 120 days after his release from duty under honorable conditions, to be restored to the position in the career service held by him when ordered to duty." Read where the 120 days sits. It is a window in which the employee is entitled to be restored, not a deadline by which the government must act. Published summaries describe this as a requirement that the employee "must be restored within 120 days of honorable discharge," which turns a right the veteran has to exercise into an obligation someone else has to meet. The risk this provision actually creates is a veteran who waits four months before asking. The federal rule is the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act, and it applies here. USERRA's definition of State at 38 U.S.C. 4303(14) is "each of the several States of the United States, the District of Columbia, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, Guam, the Virgin Islands, and other territories of the United States (including the agencies and political subdivisions thereof)." American Samoa is one of the other territories, and a territorial government agency is an employer under 4303(4). USERRA generally gives broader protection than 7.0208 does: it covers private employers as well as government ones, it runs on a schedule tied to the length of service rather than a single 120-day figure, it protects against discrimination in hiring and retention, and it carries an escalator principle that restores the position the employee would have reached had they not served. Where the two differ, the more protective rule is the one to rely on, and a territorial statute cannot cut off a federal right. The practical order of operations: give written notice before leaving, keep your orders and your release document, and apply for reemployment in writing as soon as you are back. Do not let the territorial 120-day figure become the plan; treat it as a ceiling you should never approach. Two related provisions sit nearby in the personnel rules. Administrative Code 4.0510 grants a full-time employee who is a member of a reserve component leave of absence for annual military training without charge to annual leave or loss of pay or service credit, up to 15 workdays in a calendar year, with orders attached to the application; contract employees in reserve components get the same. Published summaries describe this as "15 days paid military leave each fiscal year," which is wrong twice: the rule says workdays, and it says calendar year. Administrative Code 4.0507(a)(5), the leave without pay section, separately allows leave without pay to serve a required period of military service beyond those 15 days, for periods not exceeding one year, where the duty is categorically mandated such as recruit basic training, and expressly not for voluntary extensions or reenlistments. The pay rule on return is Administrative Code 4.0408(d), the returning veteran provision in the pay schedule placement section: an employee who meets the reemployment requirements and is reemployed in the former position has pay set at the step they would have reached had their service with the government continued, and an employee reemployed in a different position is placed under the initial appointment pay rule. That provision keys reemployment to the federal Veterans' Preference Act of 1944; USERRA has governed reemployment rights since 1994, which is another reason to work from the federal statute rather than the 1981 rule.