By Patrick Danner - Express News
With the unemployment rate for Iraq and Afghanistan vets hovering in the double digits and their ranks expected to climb with looming cuts to the military finding jobs for returning service members has grabbed the spotlight.
This is a moral obligation that we have to our veterans who have sacrificed so much and taken such great risks on our behalf" Sen.
John Cornyn R-Texas told a gathering of business leaders Thursday at the Boeing facility in Port San Antonio.
Cornyn met with officials from Boeing USAA and Lowes and other area business leaders to spotlight veterans hiring programs and the need to help returning service members make a smooth transition into the civilian workforce.
Later with the backdrop of a C-17 cargo plane and a banner reading Thank You Troops" Cornyn said the work that needs to be done to assist veterans is daunting."
The unemployment rate for veterans who had served in the military since Sept. 11 2001 stood at 13.1 percent last month five percentage points higher than the national average for civilians figures from the
Bureau of Labor Statistics show.
At a time when our economy is pretty flat when a lot of people are looking for work if there (is) any group that deserves a special helping hand not a handout but a helping hand its our returning veterans" Cornyn said.
Cornyn noted the recent passage of legislation designed to incentivize businesses to hire unemployed veterans. The
Returning Heroes Tax Credit provides businesses a maximum credit of $5600 per veteran while the Wounded Warriors Tax Credit offers businesses that hire veterans with service disabilities a maximum credit of $9600 per veteran.
More than 1.8 million veterans live in Texas; about 450000 served in Iraq or Afghanistan.
Now the countrys also faced with the onslaught of possible reductions in the military" said
Carlos Martinez CEO of the American GI Forum in San Antonio. Theres going to be a great wave of new veterans that must be addressed."
More than a million service members are expected to leave the military from 2011 through 2016 President
Barack Obama has said.
Steve Speakes a USAA executive vice president said the San Antonio financial-services company has set a deliberate focus on hiring veterans and their spouses.
About 2800 USAA employees are veterans and another 2000 employees are spouses of veterans. The company has more than 23000 employees.
Among those veterans is
Todd Nelson a retired Army master sergeant who was injured in a suicide bombing in Afghanistan that left him disfigured and partially blind.
Despite tapping various programs available to help vets gain employment Nelson said he went almost a year and a half without any job prospects.
Nelson said he was attending yet another job fair when a USAA rep told him to consider a job as a military recruiter. Nelson didnt think his skills would transfer. But he reconsidered went through two weeks of interviews and was hired. He said he beat out 700 other candidates for the job.
Asked what can be done to encourage companies to hire more vets Nelson said It needs to be a priority at the top of the organization. As that filters through the organization it frees up the hiring managers ... to take a risk on a veteran which in my experience is little to no risk."
pdanner@express-news.net
