The Military Spouse Employment Partnership held a recruitment and employment event in Arlington, Va., in October 2022. The annual event provides companies and employable military spouses direct access to one another. (Defense Department )
Two senators have called on the Defense Department to create a standard policy on leave without pay that they say will help military spouses retain employment and benefits within the department despite frequent moves with their service member.
“As you know, service members are generally relocated to new duty assignments every two to three years, and these moves create challenges for working military spouses who are forced to seek new employment,” Sens. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., and Joni Ernst, R-Iowa and an Army veteran, wrote in a letter sent Wednesday to Ashish S. Vazirani, acting undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness.
Granting leave without pay would eliminate a break in federal employment, which causes some workers to have fewer jobs available to them because some positions are only open to current federal employees. It also would eliminate the loss of certain accrued leave and the potential loss of agency-matched contributions to Thrift Savings Plan accounts that have not yet vested.
“The Department of Defense really should be walking the walk when it comes to military spouse employment,” said Maria Donnelly, an Army spouse who has been working on this subject with other spouses for the past year.
Those efforts have led to a bill being introduced in the House and Senate that would create a similar leave-without-pay policy across the entire federal government. Shaheen and Ernst are not sponsors of that bill, the Resilient Employment and Authorization Determination to Increase National Employment of Serving Spouses Act, or READINESS Act.
However, Shaheen believes this more narrowed approach could have a higher likelihood of success, according to her office.
For Donnelly, seeing several senators approach the issue from different angles showcases the urgency and importance of the change.
“It’s really incumbent on the Defense Department to show other federal agencies that it can be done and lead the way,” she said. “The Department of Defense has the authority to do it already. It’s really important that the senators are asking these questions of DOD.”
Frequent moves with the military can make it difficult for spouses to obtain full-time employment and keep it during moves. Unemployment among military spouses is about 21%, according to the Defense Department. For more than a decade, unemployment for military spouses has been higher than the national average, which is now less than 4%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
While the Pentagon has spent millions of dollars to help spouses find employment, Donnelly pointed out this policy update would be a no-cost solution that could impact the estimated 5,500 military spouses who work for the Defense Department.
Some Defense Department agencies and military service departments now offer to move military spouses into a leave-without-pay status instead of forcing them to resign their job during a move, according to the senators. However, the time afforded in the status varies drastically across the Defense Department.
The Air Force grants one year, while the Army only 90 days, but both allow for up to two years of extensions. The Navy does not have a specific policy for the spouses of service members who are reassigned, according to the senators. In the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, spouses can potentially get up to five years of leave without pay.
“These various policies, and the fact that many employees are not afforded any such option creates a confusing and unfair system,” wrote Shaheen and Ernst, who are both members of the Senate Armed Services Committee. “Therefore, we urge the department to establish a standardized policy for the military departments and agencies directing a baseline amount of leave without pay for federal civilians when their service member spouses change duty locations.”
