A point on the pay; yes, Soldiers do get paid, however it becomes a cost-benefit decision. SSG X/CPT G, a mid level civilian or law enforcement professional makes $80-$90k a year before overtime. Normal drill already eats into Soldiers’ civilian careers. Now add MUTA 6-8s (3 and 4 day drills), emergency activations, mil schools, etc. Now you have someone who has to balance the military with what pays the bills.

Next, @cale mentioned that “we re-enlist families.” Yes, but we also re-enlist EMPLOYERS. Leaders have to be honest with the limitations of  USERRA and ESGR. “Well they’re protected by USERRA and ESGR” shouldn’t be the default answer when asking more and more from your traditional Guard and USAR Soldiers. I worked for the ESGR program for a time and I can tell you there are a ton of loop holes that employers can use in order to “punish” Soldiers, to the point of termination.

California is one of those examples where it is incredibly difficult to get worthwhile training in anything but a MUTA 6 due to; distances to training sites; command direction to leave Armories; command requirements to use those training sites; and command requirements to have 1 Green Cycle drill a quarter. This forces multi-day training events, and late releases on Sunday in order to meet the minimum requirements. Now, add the fact Soldiers don’t or can’t do anything at home due to lack of CAC accessibility, and now administrative tasks that could/should be handled between drills needs to happen AT drill. So yes, planning is a huge part of making everything work, but it also takes a company commander willing to stand up and say “we can’t achieve that because of (name your variables), this is what we can realistically achieve so this is what we’re planning.”