Firms can get $50,000 for hiring Iraq veterans

Firms can get $50,000 for hiring Iraq veterans
by Sharon Lindstedt 

They have served their country with honor. They can meet the challenges of the workplace. Many veterans work well under pressure. They are often well-trained, disciplined, motivated, safety conscious, and ready to lead.

BUFFALO, New York–President Franklin Delano Roosevelt once called on Americans to give men and women who served in the military a “square deal” as they returned to civilian life. Now some six decades later, veterans are seeking that same courtesy as they come home from Iraq.

“They are running into problems finding jobs. That’s an absolute fact,” said Ed Simmons, regional veterans coordinator, New York State Department of Labor.

Employment prospects are particularly grim for the nation’s youngest veterans. Data released by the U.S. Department of Labor last month put the jobless figure for veterans ages 20 to 24 at 11 percent.

Simmons acknowledged that a less-than-robust local economy, along with a lack of on-the-job experience, is working against the young soldiers and sailors. But the decorated Vietnam vet said the Iraq War veterans have plenty to offer.

“The vet that’s coming back from Iraq is not a blank slate. They may have pounded the ground carrying a rifle, but they were also trained at real world skills,” Simmons said. “They’re coming back with solid computer skills, electronics experience and trades skills.”

A number of returning veterans are also armed with sought-after, federally certified security clearances required for many jobs in the defense industry…

Locally, Northrop-Gruman’s Amherst Systems and Moog both have military contracts that require employees to have the special clearance.

“That clearance can take as long as a year to get and the training can cost a civilian employer around $18,000. That makes these vets a great hire for a defense firm even if they’ll need job-specific training,” the labor department official said.

To assist veterans and their would-be employers, the state Labor Department has launched “RSVP,” the Reemployment Services to Veterans Program. The veteran-specific program offers businesses up to $50,000 for training cost reimbursement for hiring veterans. The program is restricted to honorably discharged veterans who left military service on or after March 1, 2003.

Detailed information on the program is available at www.workforcenewyork.org.

Veterans and employers are also being linked via the federal “HireVetsFirst” program. That effort was kicked off Nov. 9 via a national veterans job fair and employment summit in Norfolk, Va.

The event featured several hundred employers and drew some 2,000 job-seeking veterans. U.S. Labor Secretary Elaine L. Chao and Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, chairman of the Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs, took part in a roundtable discussion.

Full information on the federal veterans employment initiative can be found at www.hirevetsfirst.com.

Other conduits from military to civilian employment are the national Helmets to Hardhats program that helps veterans find work in the construction trades. More details on that program are available at www.helmetstohard-hats.com and Hire Veterans at www.hireveterans.com which has a database of employers seeking to hire Military Veterans. A benefit is that companies are profiled and receive exposure to the veterans who are seeking employment. 

Another employment-related concern for returning veterans, especially because so many older reservists are seeing active duty, is fair treatment when returning to their former jobs and careers. The federal Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Act requires employers to rehire returning servicewomen and men, pass along raises and promotions they missed and maintain benefits for prescribed periods of time www.elaw.dol.gov/userra.htm.