Military Veterans Deserve Jobs When They Return
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While we take the time this Veterans Day to honor the courage and sacrifice shown by our veterans, we should also rededicate ourselves to making sure vets have a secure and stable life after they finish their service.
The U.S. Labor Department reports the unemployment rate among Iraq and Afghanistan veterans is 11.3 percent, significantly above the overall rate of 10.2 percent for the nation as a whole. Some 185,000 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans are out of work. Many of these unemployed veterans are National Guard or Reserve troops who were called to duty but found when they came home that their old jobs were no longer there for them.
The AFL-CIO Union Veterans Council is calling on Congress to strengthen and enforce the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act, which ensures veterans can claim their former jobs when they return from active duty.
In his Veterans Day message, Union Veterans Council Chairman Mark Ayers quotes President Franklin Roosevelt who signed the first GI Bill into law in 1944:
What our servicemen and women want, more than anything else, is the assurance of satisfactory employment upon their return to civil life.
Helmets to Hardhats Launches ‘Good to Go’ Site for Returning Troops
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Making the transition from military life to a civilian life is not easy. Many veterans and their families are unprepared when that day comes. Now Helmets to Hardhats, a nonprofit program of the AFL-CIO’s Building and Construction Trades Department (BCTD), has launched a new website to help veterans better prepare for re-entry into civilian life.
Good to Go (G2G) provides service members with customizable checklists that cover everything from employment and housing to setting goals for the future.
Says Darrell Roberts, executive director of Helmets to Hardhats:
The best welcome home for a returning service member is a seamless transition into a quality civilian career.
Vets: Employee Free Choice Affirms Freedoms We Fought For
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This Fourth of July, there will parades, picnics, family gatherings and speeches about what it means to be an American and a patriot.
For the men and women who have served in the military, being a patriot means fighting at home to protect the freedoms they defended in conflicts abroad. And for millions of them, that means belonging to a union.
Take Brett McElfresh, a member of Plumbers and Pipefitters (UA) Local 94 in Canton, Ohio. McElfresh served four years in the U.S. Army, including a tour in Iraq. He is the first member of his local to join the Helmets to Hardhats program sponsored by by the AFL-CIO Building and Construction Trades Department (BCTD). The program has helped more than 5,000 military vets find new careers as electricians, plumbers, roofers and in other skilled trades.
