Many of you have probably recieved a forwarded email from a friend of a friend telling of the exemplary way Sears treats its employees who are called to duty. 

Here is an excerpt from one we received:

"How does Sears treat its employees who are called up for military duty? By law, they are required to hold their jobs open and available, but nothing more. Usually, people take a big pay cut and lose benefits as a result of being called up for active duty.

Sears is voluntarily paying the difference in salaries and maintaining all benefits, including medical insurance and bonus programs, for all called up  reservist employees for up to two years."

Emails like this have often been treated as Urban Legend, but we wanted to dig a little further.

You'll be happy to know that this example is 100% true!  And we found other examples of companies going above and beyond what the governments requires.

For example:

United Postal Service (UPS)

• (United Postal Service (UPS), which counts 4,000 to 5,000 of its 300,000 U.S. employees as reservists, will make up the difference between the employees' military service salary and their salary at UPS.
  
  The package delivery firm will also extend its health care and life insurance benefits to its reservist employees while they're on active duty.
• Plano, Texas-based EDS will make up the difference between the workers' military pay and their regular pay for a period of 180 days, or six months, with the possibility for an extension should the need arise. EDS also extends its health care benefits to workers during that period.
• Pepsi also makes up the difference between employees' military pay and their regular salary for a limited period of time and extends their health benefits while they're on active duty.

For those reservists not lucky enough to work for one of these companies, they can still look forward to some loan relief that is set forth in the 1940 Soldiers' and Sailors' Civil Relief Act. This act requires banks and financial institutions to cap the interest rate on reservists' outstanding obligations at 6 percent. That includes mortgage loans, credit card debt and other personal and consumer loans.

In a time when all the news out there seems like bad news, we were more than pleased to find this email chain not only true, but that it's even more far reaching than Sears.

Happy Veterans Day!