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.
I think that this is definetly "patriotism", and the plus is that it's a "win-win" situation. Sears holds the job open, makes up the difference in remuneration, but in return gets an employee that has been conditioned to "complete the mission".