January 16, 2003	Thursday	Ziqa'ad 12, 1423

CHICAGO: The call to active military duty that has put tens of thousands of Americans back in uniform ahead of a possible war with Iraq has left sudden holes in the workplace. Some are easily replaced, others are not.

The health care industry, struggling with a shortage of nurses, is worried. Some police, fire departments and other municipal services have already been hit.

One example is the west Tennessee town of Ripley, population about 7,000, which has lost about a dozen men.

Brothers Frank and Alan Chumley, ages 39 and 35, left for Fort Dix, New Jersey, after they were called up from their military police National Guard unit. They told family they expected to wind up in Kuwait.

The older brother worked for a factory that produces the dieting product SlimFast. There were people waiting in line for jobs there. But Alan Chumley was a prison guard, not as easily or quickly replaced without training. Both under law will have their jobs waiting for them when they return.

So will Joe Hunt, a physician in the Ripley area mobilized by the National Guard. The doctor, a valuable commodity in a rural area, left town and his current location is classified.

His patients are being cared for by others in his practice but the strain is obvious. A resident suffering from stomach flu was told there was a two-day wait for an appointment.

Since the attacks in America on Sept 11, 2001, about 130,000 National Guard and reserve men and women from all services have been called up for differing periods from towns and cities across the country.

At present nearly 60,000 are on duty, about half in the United States and half overseas. The US Army recently told about 10,000 that they are being called up, many to replace Air National Guard police protecting domestic air force bases.

The numbers are small in comparison to the entire US workforce where during 2002 alone 1.47 million jobs were cut.

But John Challenger, head of the Chicago-based placement firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas said there were effects in the health care and municipal services. “There is some scrambling going on out there. They are already short-staffed and are going to be in a tight spot,” he said.

While there is a pool of job seekers swollen by 6 percent unemployment and the economic downturn of the past two years, it is not always as simple as just finding a temporary replacement, he said .

Some companies and municipalities have elected to pay those activated the difference between their salaries and what they will be making while on active duty, Challenger said. That further strains budgets, especially in towns with falling tax revenues, and rules out finding a replacement in some cases.

“It’s a matter of growing concern,” said Gene Voegtlin, legislative counsel for the International Association of Chiefs of Police.

“We started hearing this late last year, primarily in states where there is a heavy military presence — Georgia for instance — where police officers are in the Guard after serving in the military.”

SMALL TOWNS HIT HARDER: He cited similar problems in California and Texas.

A call-up can hit a small town department much harder than it will impact the ranks of a big city force, he added.

Jim Bentley, senior vice president for strategic policy planning at the American Hospital Association, said the call-ups will have a definite impact on the medical profession as personnel are shipped out and others called up to fill in for them at domestic facilities.

He noted that the US Navy recently dispatched a hospital ship that will eventually have 1,000 beds. In general, the military’s medical needs run the entire gamut of medical disciplines, he added.

The impact, however, can be spotty and concentrated, with reserve medical personnel often clustered in areas where units are available for training, Bentley said.

Rural areas that may lose medical personnel are more likely to be within driving distance of more populous places where service will be available, simply because very remote areas tend not to have medical reservists as units they can drill with are too far away.

“It’s too early to tell for us,” said a spokesman for Atlanta-based Home Depot, which operates 1,502 retail outlets and employs thousands, many in smaller towns.

Milwaukee-based Manpower Inc., which tracks the demand for temporary workplace hiring, also said the call-up impact has not yet made an inroad into its statistics.—Reuters