A former employee of South Carolina State University says administrators won't tell him why he was fired.

But John G. Darby pointed out that it happened a month after he was activated for military duty in the buildup prior to the war in Iraq.

"You can't do that," insisted the Cope resident, who is a captain in the U.S. Army Reserves.

"It remains against the law to make employment decisions based on past, present or future military obligation," said Capt. Eric Davis, an ombudsman with the Employer Support of the Guard and Reserves.

For the past three years, Darby was an agricultural extension agent working with small and minority farmers in the federally funded 1890 Research and Extension Program.

Then he got his call-up orders.

"I've been on active duty as of Jan. 9," Darby said by phone from Fort Bragg in North Carolina, where he's a company commander over 150 soldiers in the 846th Transportation Company.

In mid-February, Darby was allowed a few days to come home and take care of some personal business. In his mail was a termination letter, dated Feb. 13.

"I regret to inform you that effective Friday, February 14, 2003, at 5:00 p.m., your services with the 1890 Research and Extension Program are no longer needed ...," wrote Delbert T. Foster, acting assistant administrator, community education and PSA.

"I left my job in good standing, on good terms," Darby said. "I don't know what in the world transpired."

"I've been trying to find out why I was dismissed" but "nobody in the administration has responded. No one will talk to me at all," Darby said, adding that when he called Foster at home, "he hung the phone up on me."

"I'm serving my country, in training, getting ready to protect my country. I don't have time to worry about things at home," he said.

Darby said he has to support his wife of 14 years and their three children. "I need my funding. They have not paid me. I have not received one check from South Carolina State University since I went on active duty."

Darby believes it's wrong for an employer to penalize an employee for "serving my country, doing what I'm supposed to do, going to war for no reason of my own. It's ludicrous. It's very much injustice."

"If it were a motivating factor in the decision to lay him off, that would be potentially unlawful," said Davis, but if the decision "was made without regard to his military service, it could have been lawful."

At the time of the interview, SCSU was shut down for spring break, and Davis could not reach anyone on campus, "so I really don't know what motivated this decision to terminate," but the timing is "something to be curious about and worth following up."

The Employer Support of the Guard and Reserves operates under the auspices of the Secretary of Defense for Reserve Affairs and serves members of all branches of the armed services.

"It is not uncommon for us to get a call from a Reserve member or Guard member who believes their employer has unlawfully taken some personnel action against them due to their military service," Davis said.

"Our job is to provide an informal mediation service. We've been fairly successful at contacting employers and educating them about the law. Sometimes they were not aware" of what the law says, he said.

"We're fairly successful at negotiating," Davis said. "In the cases we can't negotiate, we would refer them to the Department of Labor, who can investigate unfair labor practice claims."

On the Web: Read or download frequently asked questions, fact sheets and texts of relevant federal laws at http://www.esgr.com

T&D Staff Writer Lee Hendren can be reached by e-mail at lhendren@timesanddemocrat.com or by phone at 803-533-5552.

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