New bill would boost job-finding help for vets - Air Force News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Air Force Times

New bill would boost job-finding help for vets

The Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee chairwoman is pushing for a dramatic expansion of government programs aimed at helping separating service members find jobs.

With an unemployment rate of as high as 27 percent for Iraq and Afghanistan-era veterans ages 20 to 24, Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., the committee chairwoman and a member of the Senate Democratic Party leadership, worries the government isn’t providing the kind of help or follow-up service members need as they separate or retire from the service.

Her new plan, called the Hiring Heroes Act of 2011, would try to improve what the government already is doing — and do more.

For example, Murray wants transition assistance courses — aimed at preparing service members for civilian life — to be mandatory, a policy not now uniformly applied. In addition to set courses for everyone, she also wants each veteran to get an individualized assessment of the civilian jobs that best relate to his experience and education.

Defense Department and Labor Department officials have talked of an upcoming overhaul in transition workshops that would incorporate some of the changes Murray would mandate in her bill.

Once veterans leave the service, additional help in finding a job typically comes only to those who ask for it. Murray wants the government to be more aggressive. Her bill calls for the Labor Department, which has a veterans’ employment service, to periodically contact veterans to see if they are employed and if they need more help.

For disabled veterans, Murray proposes providing an additional 24 months of vocational rehabilitation and employment services for those who have exhausted their unemployment benefits and already received prior vocational and rehabilitative help.

Murray’s plan is endorsed by Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, Veterans of Foreign Wars, Disabled American Veterans and the Military Officers Association of America, and is co-sponsored by Democratic Sens. Mark Begich of Alaska, Chris Coons of Delaware and Jon Tester of Montana.

At an April hearing on veterans’ employment, Murray said the government is letting veterans down.

“I have talked to veteran after veteran who has said they did not have to go through the [Transition Assistance Program] or that it just wasn’t taken seriously when they did,” she said. She also has spoken to employers who have told her they don’t understand how military experience translates into skills they can use in their businesses.

“We can no longer afford for TAP to be seen as the last step in a service member’s enlistment. It has to be seen as the first step in their successful career,” she said. “We also need to improve efforts to translate skills from the battlefield onto a résumé and into an interview with a prospective employer.”

Murray introduced a similar, comprehensive veterans’ employment bill last year, and some parts of it — like having the Post-9/11 GI Bill cover on-the-job training, apprenticeships and vocational training — became law. The GI Bill change takes effect Aug. 1.

A price tag for her new bill, likely to be a key factor in its chances for enactment, is not yet available.