The Jury Systems Improvement Act is a federal Act that applies to many employees in states across the country, including many employees in Alaska. The Act helps to ensure that when an employee has been called to serve on a jury, the employer will not discriminate against the employee for that jury duty service. Also, the employer cannot coerce the employee to postpone the jury duty service in order to work.

There are some conditions in which an employee will be able to postpone jury duty service in order to do other things. For example, an employee may be able to postpone service for an injury or for a planned vacation. However, the reason for postponing the service should have nothing to do with coercion from the employer.

Employees should also be able to receive benefits during the time that they serve on a jury When the employee returns to work at the end of the period of jury duty service, the employee should have the same job or an equivalent job as well as the same salary and benefits that he or she had prior to taking time off for service. The employee should also return to work on any days that he or she is not actively serving, even when the trial is on-going.

When an employee serves, the employee should provide proof of the service to the employer. This proof can be a copy of the summons or a proof of service for each date of service, which can be obtained from the clerk of the court.

Employers may be fined up to $1,000 per employee, per occasion if they discriminate against an employee for his or her service. If an employer terminates an employee for his or her service, the employer could need to pay for lost wages and benefits. CB

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 30th, 2008 at 4:51 pm and is filed under Labor & Employment Laws, Labor Laws. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.