Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Employment of Veterans Locally, A Daunting Task!!!

As we discuss further how we can provide better employment opportunities towards our veterans during a time where the unemployment rate may top 10% across America, where people are taking out bill board signs requesting please hire my husband, to a time where stimulus monies are being decided upon where the most benefit to America might be; employment success of veterans outside of the Federal Government is even more challenging. On March 04, 2009 members of the Veterans of Foreign Wars and other auxiliaries testified to the Committee on Veterans’ Affairs Subcommittee on Economic Opportunity with respect to
H.R. 147, H.R. 228, H.R. 297, H.R. 466, H.R. 929, H.R. 942, H.R. 950, H.R. 1088, H.R. 1089, and H.R. 1171. A review of the testimonyhttp://tinyurl.com/csshd7. I will quote Justin Brown of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, “During this economic recession the number of unemployed veterans has increased to 841,474 as of January 2009.”

From the numerous programs that exist to hire veterans in the local economy, awareness to the general public is one of the essential elements to bring to light the skills that these people have to offer. H.R. 3681, Veterans Benefits Awareness Act of 2007 can be instrumental with a media relations campaign explaining how hiring a veteran can benefit not only the veteran but the business establishment can receive a tax benefit http://tinyurl.com/dxec78. I quote from Phil Landis, “Studies have demonstrated that the longer a person stays in a supportive environment, the greater the likelihood of long term success is.” (http://tinyurl.com/c95e5s)

The Veterans’ Administration does have the Vocational Rehabilitation and Employment program which does offer services but the objective of these programs should be to provide that “supportive environment” building upon a career outside of the military, ensuring that the goal is to combat homeless, avoiding the stigma associated with being in combat, and most importantly provide a productive future in society reducing the burden on tax payers, not solely focusing on college degrees but specific skill sets. Providing employment careers is the key term here. The
Veterans Benefits Awareness Act of 2007 can again bring the general public to understand more about how much veterans offer.

Knowing that approximately 150,000 veterans maybe homeless on a given day, looking nationwide and quoting from Forbes, “The 150,000 chronically homeless people in the United States cost $10.95 billion per year in public funds. If these individuals were all permanently housed, the expense would be expected to fall to $7.88 billion.” (http://tinyurl.com/dz5xgl) These are 2006 figures. Look at the savings we can provide the tax payers, look at the benefit we can provide the veteran, look at how we can even give the business a tax break and rebuild our economy.

It is very true the Honorable Shinseki has a daunting task of job creation for soldiers (http://tinyurl.com/8lcw7o) and in today’s recession the task is even more challenging with numerous businesses closing, unemployment lines growing, people with disabilities waiting 4 years to receive disability insurance from the Social Security Administration, discrimination workload of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission growing, more deployments with the possibility of more injured needing job placement in the future. The time to act is now!

As you continue to read my blogs, I was told once that you are not in race but a marathon. I am not a ticking time bomb; I am looking for solutions and policy development as to how we as America can solve some of these problems…..

Sunday, April 5, 2009

The Federal Hiring of Veterans Fact or Fiction

Now I have tried to bring numerous mentions to what are the issues facing our veterans and it seems that the cycle of trying to fix all the things going on in America at the present moment, Veterans issues are just one issue that President Obama is trying to juggle at one moment. My intent in these blogs is one to decrease the perception that health care is the number one issue facing veterans’ issues, two to come up with solutions to the endless cycle of the homeless problems that cause various degrees of indirect cost to our tax payers, three to explain to the common civilian non-military, non-politician why the struggle seems so difficult, and lastly explain how over time exposure to elements, conditions, stereotypical viewpoints seen from movie productions or from fear from the events of certain individuals are a leading factor to the high unemployment rate facing American’s Veterans.

We are going to discuss in detail the Federal Hiring practice and the intent of “Veterans Preference” as it relates to competing for employment in the Federal Government. As the Vietnam War ended and the multitude of soldiers began to come home, Congress enacted the Vietnam Era Veterans Readjustment Assistance Act of 1974. You the reader can read all the details here http://tinyurl.com/cg3dod. Now the intent of the law meant well but if we look back in history the recession of 1973 – 1975 was considered one of the most severe recessions since World War II. This would bring the reader to the times we are facing today with unemployment reaching 8.5% and out of that unemployment 1 in 9 being a veteran; 300,000 might be suffering from some sort of injury related to multiple tours; facing the fight for disability claims; facing an increasing hostile environment of discrimination or a hostile environment of civilian job placement verses military skill recognition; to finally a feeling of hopelessness leading to the final tour of duty – an empty box, cold, hungry, homeless, forgotten, and all alone.

As time progressed, congress modified the Vietnam Era Readjustment Act to be the Veterans Recruitment Act (VRA) and later the Veterans Employment Opportunity Act (VEOA) of 1998 was passed which allowed “preference” eligibles or veterans to compete for vacancies under merit promotion procedures. To the common reader I have to explain what means “Veterans Preference” and how the law has gotten twisted to avoid giving veterans points to compete for employment. In the beginning, “The Spirit of the Law” was intended to give veterans a fighting chance at positions at the GS-11 level based of their experience level in order to compete with people that get Masters Degrees and are earning GS-11 figures http://tinyurl.com/c8unua. Now you take a soldier, highly trained, deployed multiple times, might have found his dream girl, had a few children, might have gotten divorced, layered with trauma; and congress passes this law in the past that promises a future. He comes home with hopes and dreams of finding a new career but soon understands that the so-called “Veterans Preference” in truth is another political election idea used to gather votes but it does not solve the problem of getting veterans jobs and as the Vietnam veteran realized, these acts were promises given in vain by politicians but never came to light and again the veteran has his final tour of duty – an empty box, cold, hungry, homeless, forgotten, and all alone.

Now obviously just being a veteran alone does not just grant you a job in the Federal workforce. There has to be some since of equality when it comes to hiring managers in selecting the best qualified candidate. But the reader has to understand the purpose of the laws and that was to give a veteran an opportunity to compete for these positions. The United States Office of Personnel Management (OPM) http://tinyurl.com/dgacka explains in detail how “preference” is handled. An issue now arises because of David M. Brandt v. Department of the Air Force, Docket No. SF-3443-04-0614-I-3 which has nullified the “Spirit of the Law”. You can see Dr. Charles W. Heckman’s open letter to Senator Maria Cantwell http://tinyurl.com/cqdxn7 which explains how Federal agencies circumvent utilization of veterans’ preference. When a veteran submits an application for a Federal Job under normal conditions, the job is advertised under MERIT and/or Delegated Examining Unit. If the Federal agency chooses to utilize delegated examining unit, the veteran is granted points for disability and the veteran is given a fighting chance at positions at the GS-11 level based of their experience level in order to compete with people that get Masters Degrees as the law was truly intended. However, when we examine “The Employment of Veterans in the Federal Government Fiscal Year 2007” http://tinyurl.com/d7mw8f notice one the lack of utilization of the Veterans Recruitment Act or the Veterans Employment Opportunity Act outside of Department of Defense organizations, the decrease in 30% or more hiring of disabled veterans, and two funding exist along with other benefits overlooked for agencies to hire veterans. Remember in order to fight homelessness we must provide income, and we must fix some of these things now.

Friday, April 3, 2009

Supporting the Employment Success of Veterans with TBI & PTSD (The Real Story)

Due to a PTSD flashback caused by harassment from a co-worker, I was terminated from employment. Sec 12112 of the Americans with Disabilities Act states No covered entity shall discriminate against a qualified individual with a disability because of the disability of such individual in regard to job application procedures, the hiring, advancement, or discharge of employees, employee compensation, job training, and other terms, conditions, and privileges of employment. PTSD is a disability.

I am writing this blog because the numbers of veterans with PTSD will grow more and more and this disability must get recognized as a disability that can be controlled, can be accommodated, and employment can be part of rehabilitation. Termination based off of ignorance or reluctance is just adding to the grim numbers of our veterans. As the 9th Circuit noted in Humphrey v. Memorial Hospital Ass'n 239 F.3d 1128 (2001), conduct resulting from a disability is considered to be part of the disability, rather than a separate basis for termination.

The facts given below paint a very eye opening picture of what our nation faces.

http://www.aflcio.org/issues/politics/upload/unionveterans2008_keyfacts.pdf

I would like to introduce the readers to author Aaron Glantz.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9yRp0mFS3U

Reviews of "The War Comes Home" --

"A breathtaking rebuke to government hypocrisy and an overdue contribution to gaining critical public awareness of this official neglect."—Publishers Weekly

"Aaron Glantz is one of the truly outstanding young journalists of our times." —Bob McChesney, author of Rich Media, Poor Democracy, and founder of Free Press

"One of the many scandals of the war in Iraq is how the administration has betrayed our returning servicemen. I'm grateful that the facts surrounding these tragedies are finally being exposed."—Paul Haggis, Academy-Award-winning director of Crash and In the Valley of Elah, screenwriter of Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima

"A must-read for those who claim to support our troops."—Robert G. Gard, Lt. General, U.S. Army (ret.)

"The treatment by the Bush Administration of America's returning veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is one of the saddest chapters in American history. This story is painfully documented by Aaron Glantz. This book is a must-read for anyone who wants to make the phrase, 'Support the Troops,' more than a slogan."—Former US Senator Max Cleland

"A fitting tribute to what these men and women fought and risked their lives and well-being for."—Gerald Nicosia, author of Home to War

"This superbly documented and eloquent book is a clarion call for honesty, compassion, outrage, and an end to the lies that cause so much suffering in far-off countries and in our own nation."—Norman Solomon, author of War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death

"Aaron Glantz draws on his eyewitness experiences of reporting in Iraq to bring the courage and the suffering of our troops into vivid relief. The War Comes Home exposes how physical and mental injuries plague our returning servicemen and what we can do about it."—Linda Bilmes, coauthor of The Three Trillion Dollar War

"Weep, America, cringe, America. We talk a good game about honoring all those who go into harm's way for our sake and caring for those who get physically and psychologically broken, but do we go beyond fine words and a few gold-plated flagship medical facilities? Are we walking the walk? Are we getting it right? Aaron Glantz is in our face on the military treatment facilities, the VA, and civilian society at large."—Jonathan Shay, MD, PhD, author of Achilles in Vietnam and Odysseus in America. MacArthur Fellow

"Aaron Glantz reports on the human cost of war, what it does physically and emotionally to those young men and women who carry out industrial slaughter. He rips apart the myths we tell ourselves about war and illustrates, in painful detail, the dark psychological holes that those who have been through war's trauma endure and will always endure. He reminds us that the essence of war is not glory, heroism, and honor but death."—Chris Hedges, former New York Times foreign correspondent, author of War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning

"We should all be reading people like Greg Palast and Aaron Glantz."—Al Kennedy, The Guardian (UK)

The War Comes Home: Washington's Battle against America's Veterans

Unfortunately such extraordinary measures are necessary because the current system for providing assistance to veterans doesn’t work in any fashion that one could describe as adequate, or in a timely manner. Quite often, the need for assistance becomes moot after the death of the veteran, incarceration, addiction, or economic ruin have rendered the assistance too little and too late.

Moving through the terminal was a group of soldiers in their “camos,” as they began heading to their gate. Everybody (well almost everybody) was abruptly on their feet with their hands waving and cheering. When I saw the soldiers (probably 30-40 of them) being applauded and cheered for, it hit me. I’m not alone! I’m not the only red-blooded American, who still loves this country, and who supports our troops and their families. Of course I immediately stopped and began clapping for these young unsung heroes, who are putting their lives on the line every day for us, so we can go to school, work, church and home without fear of reprisal. Just when I thought I could not be more proud of my country or of our service men and women, a young girl, no more than 6 or 7 years old, ran up to one of the male soldiers. He knelt down and said, “Hi.”

The little girl then asked him if he would give something to her Daddy for her. The young soldier (he couldn’t be any older than maybe 22 himself) said he would try and what did she want to give him to give to her daddy? Then suddenly the little girl grabbed the neck of this soldier, gave him the biggest hug she could muster and then kissed him on the cheek.

The mother of the little girl, who said her daughter’s name was Courtney, told the young soldier that her husband was a marine and had been in Iraq for 11 months now. As the Mom was explaining how much her daughter Courtney missed her father, the young soldier’s eyes began to tear up.

When this temporarily single Mom was done explaining the situation, all of a sudden the soldiers huddled together for a brief second. One of the servicemen then pulled out a military looking walkie-talkie. They started playing with the device and talking back and forth on it. After about 10-15 seconds of this, the young soldier walked back over to Courtney, bent down and said this to her, “I spoke with your Daddy, and he told me to give this to you.”

He then hugged this little girl that he had just met and gave her a kiss on the cheek, he finished by saying, “Your Daddy told me to tell you that he loves you more than anything and he is coming home soon.” The Mom at this point was crying almost uncontrollably, and when the young soldier got on his feet, he saluted Courtney and her Mom. I was standing no more than six feet away from where this entire event unfolded. As the soldiers began to leave heading towards their gate, people resumed their applause.

As I stood there applauding and looked around, there were no dry eyes, including my own. The young soldier in a last act of selflessness turned around and blew a kiss to Courtney with a tear rolling down his cheek.”

The first thing a soldier says when asked, “What can we do to make things better for you?” No hesitation from him/her. “We need your support and your prayers” is the reply.

Therefore the American people should continue to pray for the military wherever its units are. We can be proud in stating what we’ve been told over and over again, “We live in the land of the free, only because of the brave:”

We often take for granted the very things that most deserve our gratitude!

When asked about the "war on terror" phrase by CNN's Anderson Cooper, Obama said, "Well you know, I think it is very important for us to recognize that we have a battle or a war against some terrorist organizations … Words matter in this situation because one of the ways we're going to win this struggle is through the battle of hearts and minds."

I think we should start looking what the war is doing to us here, how our country is starting to put us back on the streets, just like Vietnam

I am writing this blog with the hopes of bringing light to the nation to the struggles facing all that suffer with Psychiatric Disabilities. With the terror attacks at 911 to the shooting at VCU you would assume that this Country is “Gun Shy” towards our veterans when it comes to PTSD. This blog is written on behalf of all that suffer from this disability of PTSD, the rape victims, the police officer , or the child that is being abused.

As I continue to read more and more about the economy, about the unemployment rates, about the homeless veterans, about the increasing number of deployments, the increased focus on Veteran health care, I believe we are missing the issue and that being employment success outside of the military.