The U.S. Department of Justice is taking up the fight of a University Place man who says he came home from war to find his job eliminated.
Justice Department attorneys filed suit Thursday in U.S. District Court in Tacoma on behalf of Dave Axtell.
The Air Force reservist worked as a driver supervisor at James J. Williams Bulk Service Transport before being called to active duty in 2005, the lawsuit states. He split time between the company’s Pacific and Kalama locations.
The company specializes in hauling hazardous materials across the Northwest and Canada. Its parent corporation, Trans-System Inc., also is named as a defendant.
Axtell was honorably discharged in 2009 after serving in Afghanistan. His job in the military and where he was deployed are not mentioned in the suit.
When Axtell tried to return to his civilian job, company officials told him the Pacific portion of his job had been eliminated and that he would have to move to the Kalama area if he wished to retain his management job, according to the suit.
They then offered him a job as a driver at reduced pay and responsibility, the suit alleges, and later fired him for what he contends were trivial infractions: That his rig leaked a small amount of oil on one run and that he hauled a load without proper paperwork on another.
Axtell says he cleaned up the oil spill quickly and was not at fault for the paperwork error.
Federal attorneys wrote in the lawsuit that the company’s actions violated the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act. What’s more, federal officials warned the company before it fired Axtell that it might be violating the act, the suit states.
The act “requires employers to promptly re-employ returning service members in the positions they would have held had their employment been not interrupted by military service or in a position of like seniority, status and pay,” the Justice Department said announcing the lawsuit.
“These soldiers have made many sacrifices, and the loss of a career or appropriate pay when they return home cannot be allowed,” said Jenny Durkan, the U.S. attorney for Western Washington.
Attempts to contact company officials for comment were unsuccessful.
Axtell wants his termination declared unlawful, to be paid lost wages and “further relief as may be just and proper,” the lawsuit states.
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