Veterans for Common Sense

Washington, D.C. — America’s soldiers, sailors, airmen, Guardsmen and Marines are in near constant combat against brutal, committed adversaries. Yet, in nine trips to Iraq and Afghanistan covering U.S. military operations for FOX News since 2001, I’ve never seen our troops bested in battle. But it turns out that not all the fights are on foreign soil and sometimes the outcome depends on unusual allies. Last month, on March 6th, the Supreme Court handed our Armed Forces a major victory when it ruled in Rumsfeld v. Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights, that colleges accepting federal funds had to permit military recruiters access to campus. Unfortunately, that’s not the only battle that needs to be fought and won on the home front.

While preparing a documentary on the medical treatment our wounded warriors receive, a representative of the Disabled American Veterans (DAV) told me, that while health care and rehabilitation for those who have been injured has vastly improved since the Vietnam era — the “real scandal is how many veterans of this war are unemployed.” I initially thought he was referring to those who had been injured by enemy fire — but he quickly educated me: “You don’t have to be wounded in action to be ‘unemployable.’ Just to have served in this war makes it tougher to get a job.”

Unfortunately he’s right. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, the national Unemployment rate is hovering around 4.8 percent. But for veterans of the Global War on Terror (GWOT), the unemployment rate is more than three times higher — 15.6 percent. Why?

Part of the answer is found in the fact that so few corporate executives and personnel managers are veterans themselves. Couple that with a drumbeat of adverse publicity about the war, a mainstream media fixation on military “atrocities” and the constant harping about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder — PTSD — and one has to wonder how any war veteran gets hired. On a recent flight to Texas, my seatmate, a corporate CEO, asked if “all the troops coming back from ‘over there’ were ‘screwed up.’” He cited a study alleging that, “more than a third of those who served in Iraq and Afghanistan needed psychological treatment.” The actual number — according to the American Medical Association — is 35 percent — a figure compiled by psychiatrists who have made diagnosing PTSD a self-employment program.

It turns out that veterans’ unemployment is a two-fold problem. First, there are those — about 180,000 of them this year, according to the Department of Defense — who complete their service contracts and with Honorable Discharges in hand — enter the job market. Though they are all volunteers, all high school graduates and have years of experience in positions of extraordinary responsibility, far too many employers are turning them away.

The second group of unemployed “GWOT Vets” are among the 542,000 National Guard and reserve troops called up since September 11, 2001 and fired — illegally in many cases — by employers more concerned with service to self than serving the country. A recent investigation by the Chicago Sun-Times found that, “with reservists away from their jobs more, some employers are balking at holding those jobs for them when they return, as federal law requires.” The paper also noted that many employers are reluctant to hire members of the Guard and Reserve because of the “possibility” of deployment and that since the terror attacks on 9-11, there has been a 38 percent increase in complaints filed with the U.S. Labor Department accusing employers of job discrimination against reservists and Guardsmen.

The Federal government hasn’t exactly ignored the problem of going from the front lines to the unemployment line — but the disproportionate number of out of work vets proves that measures taken thus far are not working. The Uniformed Services Employment and Re-employment Rights Act of 1994 is supposed to protect members of the Guard and Reserve from job discrimination. Yet, as with all Federal “affirmative action” programs, verifying that an employer has denied equal employment opportunity, pay, benefits or promotion because of military service has proven to be extremely difficult ever since the law was enacted.

In recognition that the problem is getting worse, the Departments of Veterans Affairs and Labor have begun a program to link veterans with job openings. The website offers employers a place to post “help wanted” notices and provides useful advice for job hunting vets. Unfortunately, too few vets and employers know about the site and promotion is almost non-existent.

Veterans’ unemployment is more than a national embarrassment — it actually hurts national security, adversely affects recruiting an all-volunteer force. Military recruiters acknowledge that nearly half of those who agree to join do so believing that they will be “more employable” after completing military service. Once the word gets out that it is in fact harder to get a job after a “hitch” in uniform — signing up quality recruits gets a whole lot tougher.

Clearly, threats of lawsuits and voluntary programs like Hire Vets First are not enough. It’s time for Congress to provide tangible incentives — like a federal tax break for businesses that hire war vets. It’s the surest way to reward those who have served — and help keep us the home of the brave and the land of the free.

This is a tough day for me.  I am announcing that I will not run for reelection and will retire at the end of my current term in the U.S. House of Representatives.When I announced in 1998 that I had Parkinson’s Disease, my doctor said that this condition would not interfere with my work and that I would be able to perform at a high level for a number of years.  That window of opportunity is now closing.I fully expected that I would continue my work for the foreseeable future following this current break from the office.  But I have come to recognize that the time needed to address my health makes it difficult to wage a campaign and carry out my work as representative.  I will return soon and to the best of my ability complete the important work of this term in my roles as representative and Ranking Member of the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs.This decision is especially tough because this job means so much to me.  I believe strongly in serving people and working to make a positive difference in their lives.  Every day has been rewarding and I’m proud of what I’ve been able to accomplish and the fights I’ve made.I thank my family and everyone who has worked with me — great friends, terrific colleagues, a dedicated staff, fellow vets.  And I appreciate the support of people I never met before who would ask how I was doing and tell me to keep up the good fight.  I’ll be doing that in the weeks and months ahead and look forward to thanking every one of you personally for all you have meant to me.To my constituents and veterans across this country, it is an honor and privilege to represent you.Semper Fi, Lane Evans

Jim Manning partially broke his knee during a parachute jump in 1952, when he was an Army paratrooper during the Korean War. When he tried to file a disability claim, the government told him his file was destroyed in a fire.

In the late 1990s, hoping that his file was among thousands of old military documents found in St. Louis, he filed a fresh claim to get disability pay amounting to about $100 to $300 a month. He’s yet to hear back from the Department of Veterans Affairs about whether or when he’ll get the money.

“How many years do you wait for this stuff to happen?” the 73-year-old Neptune resident asked Wednesday during an informational trip he took with about 50 other New Jersey veterans.

“We’re supposed to have something like 8,000 veterans in New Jersey that have not filed claims because they get discouraged. You file a claim and you have to wait a year and they delay everything,” he said. “And the (veterans) say, ‘To hell with it. There’s no sense in even doing it.”‘

The veterans, most of whom fought in World War II and Korea, came to get briefings from the Bush administration, disability groups and Congress. They were invited by Rep. Rush Holt, D-Hopewell Township, who has arranged similar meetings for police officers, nurses and librarians.

Holt said the meetings let constituents learn about national issues and give him an opportunity to find out how constituents feels about proposed changes to federal policy.

Ronald Dash, a 56-year-old Vietnam War veteran who lives in Willingboro, was furious when he learned about proposals to increase the prescription drug co-payments and charge each beneficiary $250 per year to accommodate the growing numbers of soldiers returning from Afghanistan and Iraq.

Many veterans also took the opportunity to talk about problems they’re facing, such as long bureaucratic delays.

Christine Hill, VA deputy assistant secretary for legislative affairs, said the department is trying to automate more functions and promised to forward the vets’ concerns to top officials.

Carteret resident Jack McGreevey, the 77-year-old father of former Gov. James McGreevey, was unfazed. He came to press the cases of octogenarian friends who were waiting for months to hear back about their disability claims. Displaying a letter from the VA that promised action in 45 days, the Marine Corps veteran of World War II and Korea said, “Next month, it will be 11 months. They’re not improving the system. They’re jerking these guys around.”

Families of troops facing a second or third deployment are less likely to receive support services they need than during the first tour of duty, a new survey of military families found.

The study, conducted by the National Military Family Association, included responses from 1,592 military families and found that just 47 percent of those surveyed felt they received “consistent support” from the services and their spouses’ units. Some 17 percent said they received no support at all.

Joyce Wessel Raezer, government relations director for the association, said researchers were surprised to discover that many families facing a second or third deployment and new stresses felt they did not have the same range of counseling, support or information services that were available the first time.

“There’s often a feeling from command and from the support groups that, ‘We’ve done all this before, so why do we have to go through everything again?’” she said.

“But we’re seeing a lot of families who, the second time around, might need that same information, or they may need some help that they hadn’t before.”

Officials from the Marines and Army said they’ve emphasized to commanders the importance of treating every deployment as if it were brand new to the families, giving them a full overview of the services and resources available.

“The Marine Corps is such a young force, we’re always having someone new join the unit,” said Bryan Driver, spokesman for the Marines personal and family readiness division. “So our units basically start over with every deployment.”

He said the Marines provide many more family services than they did at the start of the Iraq war, and that officials believe the service is doing a better job reaching to families today than just a few years ago.

But he noted that officials have made a new push to include families of Guardsmen and reservists, groups that typically are harder to reach.

Army spokesman Maj. Nathan Banks said tending to military families’ needs is a top priority for deploying units, and that all commanders should be making sure to update spouses on support groups and counseling options no matter how many times a soldier has been deployed.

Christina Jumper, a research associate on the project, said the survey did not find indications which families might need more help dealing with additional deployments. Family size and length of service did not make a military spouse more or less likely to need counseling during a second deployment.

But families that sought counseling during a servicemember’s deployment were better prepared to handle emotional issues during subsequent tours, Jumper said.

The association on Tuesday used the survey’s release to push for more funding for family volunteer services, more counseling and support programs, and more attention from the services in tending to the needs of families both before and after deployment.

Susan Evers, a research associate on the project, said family members were not only concerned with services available during deployment but also with help available once their troops returned home. Fifteen percent said they were only partially prepared or not at all ready for the emotional and social difficulties of reuniting after the tour of duty.

Rep. Chet Edwards, D-Texas, spoke during the survey release event and called the report a road map for legislators as they shape defense policy. Programs such as impact aid for schools with military children and counseling services for families with deployed troops, he said, must be fully funded.

“When it comes to supporting military families, it’s about keeping our promise to the troops,” he said.

A bipartisan bill introduced Tuesday would offer greater income tax forgiveness for service members who die as a result of injury or disease incurred in a combat zone.

The Fallen Heroes Tax Fairness Act of 2006, sponsored by Reps. Robert Ney, R-Ohio, and Michael McNulty, D-N.Y., is simply an attempt to provide the same tax exemptions for combat-related deaths that apply to civilians who die in terrorist acts, the two said in a joint statement.

“Our fallen soldiers should be treated like the American heroes that they are and not like the second-class citizens that the IRS tax code currently treats them as,” Ney said. “This is an outrageous discrepancy that must be corrected immediately.”

“The families of American soldiers killed in action face challenges beyond mourning the loss of their loved one,” added McNulty. “Often, they experience economic turmoil due to lost income and unexpected financial costs.”

The bill, HR 5032, would provide a two-year tax exemption for service members killed in combat or of combat-related causes, the same exemption provided to civilians who are victims of terrorist attacks.

The Internal Revenue Code includes a section granting certain civilians an automatic income tax exemption for two years, the year of death and the year prior to death. This rule, created for those who die in terrorist attacks, has been applied to civilians killed in Iraq.

However, a U.S. service member killed in combat does not receive the same automatic income tax exemption; only their pay while in the war zone is considered tax-free.

“This unfair treatment of America’s heroes should not be allowed to continue any longer,” Ney said.

“This is simply a case of doing the right thing,” said McNulty, a member of the House Ways and Means Committee, where all tax-related legislation originates.

WASHINGTON — Every day, Staff Sgt. Eugene Simpson is back in the pocket, looking for the open receiver downfield.

In his mind, he’s there again, reliving his days as a high school football quarterback, a junior college cornerback and a point guard on the basketball team.

He can’t suppress a grin, and that’s the incongruous moment in his story, because this 29-year-old father of four with the upper body physique of the athlete he once was is sitting in his wheelchair in Washington’s U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) hospital, paralyzed from the waist down, a graduate of the Iraq war, Class of 2004.

“I can’t let this beat me,” he says. “It’s a competition, it’s that competition left over from my days in sports.”

Almost on the other side of the country, Sgt. Michael Sarro, Iraq war, Class of 2005, is lying in a hospital bed in Texas, his 10th or 11th time back there — he’s lost count — talking about the nights, when darkness rolls in, and you’re all alone, with nothing but time to think, about yourself, about what happened, about why it happened.

“Some of those things I’ve thought or felt, I’m not sure I want the guys I know to read about,” he says. “You know, the military, it’s really the biggest tough guy convention you’ll find … you have to keep that tough guy outlook.”

No one could ever question the toughness of Simpson or Sarro, two of the more than 17,000 injured Iraq war veterans, many battling back from horrific injuries in this country as it marks the third anniversary of the invasion of Iraq.

But as the fight drags on, there are questions about the cost of this war to a generation of young men and women.

There are even larger questions about the psychological cost to those who have returned and the tens of thousands who will someday return to try to reintegrate into everyday life here.

By some estimates, a U.S. Senate committee was recently told, one in three of the homeless in America are veterans, and more and more they are young veterans of Afghanistan or the two Iraq campaigns.

A study published in the Journal of American Medicine last month concluded about one-third of Iraq war veterans seek mental health help upon their return. The study of 222,620 veterans found the risk for serious mental problems was much higher in Iraq veterans than those returned from Afghanistan or other conflicts.

The study found 80 per cent of those who were diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) reported witnessing persons being wounded or killed or being involved in combat in which they fired their weapons.

“For those who survive, they return home having seen hellish things,” says Dave Uchic, a spokesperson for Paralyzed Veterans of America.

“They are serving in a constant state of stress. There is no front. It is urban warfare. What if Iraq tips to civil war? They could witness massacres or huge waves of suicide bombings.

“This is a terrible thing they have to deal with over there. But this could get much worse when more and more start coming home.”

Canada now has about 2,200 troops stationed in Afghanistan and is starting to suffer casualties. The U.S. experience may serve as a precursor to the types of problems Canadian veterans could face when they return home.

Tom Cray of the U.S. National Coalition for Homeless Veterans told a congressional committee that there are 200,000 veterans living on American streets on any given night, but his network is seeing more and more veterans from this Iraq war, many of them suffering PTSD, on the streets.

To deal with the escalating needs of veterans, U.S. President George W. Bush is asking Congress to approve a Veterans Affairs budget of $80.6 billion (U.S.) for the coming year, including $34.3 billion for medical care, an 11 per cent increase.

Of the medical component, Veterans Affairs is prepared to spend $3.2 billion on mental health services.

Veterans Affairs Secretary James Nicholson says the department is reaching out to veterans to try to reassure them there is no stigma attached to seeking help for PTSD.

“We’re emphasizing the symptoms of PTSD for obvious reasons, although it hasn’t been done before,” he told a Senate committee. “When they have the kind of encounters that they do … these are quite usual reactions to that unusual experience of combat or the environment that they lived in, in Iraq or Afghanistan, and they shouldn’t think they’re losing their mind, there should be no stigma attached to this by others or self-imposed.”

All returning active duty service members, reservists and National Guard members are eligible for fully paid health care or nursing home care for two years after their release from active military service, as long as their illness or affliction is related to their combat service.

Simpson, who is a single parent to four boys, Raekwon, 9, Dashan, 7, Kaya, 4, and Shimon, 3, receives the military’s maximum disability allowance of $4,000 tax-free per month.

Sarro lauds a military that, by his estimate, has paid out $500,000 for his surgeries.

“I can’t stop praising the military,” he said. “Yes, they put you in harm’s way, but that’s your job.”

Returning vets, as well, must deal with two other factors. They must continue to watch a war on television, knowing they can’t participate.

Sarro, for example, lamented that he couldn’t be part of Operation Swarmer, the U.S.-Iraqi offensive launched last week.

Simpson has the opposite reaction, calling such a wish “insane.”

“You know soldiers, pride gets in the way of a lot of things they say,” he says.

“I can watch it now. Back when I got hurt and my unit was still over there, I couldn’t watch it. My buddies were there, you have a close relationship with those guys.

“I didn’t want to be watching TV and hear about a buddy getting killed.”

Jon Soltz, an Iraq war veteran and now the executive director of the political action committee of the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA) says “it’s hard to fight a war and see that war being fought on TV. It’s harder to come back and learn the justification for that war wasn’t clear.

“These things will take a toll.

“We don’t feel the [VA] is anywhere near equipped to deal with the influx of Iraq war veterans.”

He also tells the story of a returned soldier who had lost his arm, and was diagnosed with PTSD by his civilian psychiatrist, but his military psychiatrist told him he had “adjustment disorder.” The military is not yet adept at diagnosing PTSD, let alone treating the disorder, he says.

Paul Hackett, the Iraq war veteran who narrowly missed winning an Ohio congressional seat in a special election last summer — before his own Democratic party sidelined him — says the cost of continued health care will eventually mean the war tab in the United States will hit $2 trillion.

“We are creating a huge number of veterans that are going to have a tremendous financial impact on this country,” he says.

But one thing returning veterans do not have to worry about, particularly in comparison to the plight of those who had returned from Vietnam, is the reception at home.

Most are greeted as heroes, regardless of the unpopularity of the war on the homefront.

What is remarkable about the tales of Sarro and Simpson are the similarities in how they were injured and the networks of support when they returned.

Simpson, a tank commander in the Germany-based 177th Armored Brigade, volunteered the morning of April 7, 2004, to pick up meals from another base camp in the Tikrit area.

He was in the lead Humvee in a three-vehicle convoy when he stopped about 1,000 metres from his base camp because the truck of Iraqi soldiers behind him had stopped and ignored his calls to continue.

“I looked back to see what the problem was, and I saw a guy between two houses in the alley with a car remote,” he recalls.

“I knew instantly it was for explosives. My first reaction was to raise my gun and shoot at him, but before I could do it, he detonated the explosives.”

He can remember his enemy’s eyes — cold, betraying a man with a determination to do his job. He tried to jump to the back seat, but as soon as he turned his back, he took the scrap metal and debris in the back and realized he couldn’t move his lower body.

“I was scared to look down and find I had no legs at all.”

On May 14, 2005, Sarro, now 26, was similarly only about 500 metres from base camp when his Humvee ran over two anti-tank mines.

His leg already injured by shrapnel, he tried to assist colleagues when he saw a flare go up about 150 metres away, a signal for an attack from the enemy.

During the ensuing firefight, about 20 minutes later, he was shot “right through the leg.”

“It is ungodly the amount of support you get from people,” says Sarro, who wants to counsel troubled youth and hopes to write a book to help teens who may have been travelling down the wrong path, as he was, before he joined the military.

“You just can’t keep him down,” says his father, Mike Sarro, of Phoenixville, Pa.

When Simpson returned home to Dale City, Va., local residents refitted his parents’ home to ensure it was wheelchair accessible.

He will soon be moving into a new wheelchair-accessible home being built by a non-profit charity known as Homes For Our Troops.

He credits his friends, his parents and God as those he talks to to help him through his darkest days.

“I’m alive,” he says. “That’s what counts. I came to a point where I could handle this. Someone else in my same position may not have been able to handle it. Am I above anybody else?

“No. I just won’t let this beat me.”

SAN DIEGO — In anticipation of more U.S. casualties in Iraq and the lengthy care needed for the wounded and their families, the Naval Medical Center is expanding its programs for amputees and other severely injured patients.

Also, the San Diego facility is setting up therapy groups for post-traumatic stress sufferers and — in a change that broadens the focus from just the patient — support groups for families of the wounded

“You can’t take care of just the Marine, you have to take care of the family too,” said Capt. Amy Wandel, the hospital’s chief plastic surgeon.

By summer, the sprawling hospital on the edge of Balboa Park plans to have a combat casualty center so that Marines who have been gravely wounded, such as losing an arm or leg, no longer have to go to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington or Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, far from their families.

The hospital here — the busiest in the U.S. military — has concentrated more on follow-up care for combat casualties, after the initial surgery and rehabilitation have been done at other places.

Now, injured troops from West Coast units will be flown directly to San Diego from Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, the U.S. military hospital that is the first stop for personnel injured in Iraq or Afghanistan.

With 25,000 Marines from Camp Pendleton and Twentynine Palms, Calif., recently deployed to Iraq as part of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force’s third tour, doctors are bracing for another round of wounded, including many with severe blast injuries from improvised explosive devices hidden along roadsides.

“Unfortunately, we’ve developed a lot of expertise in that field,” said Capt. Bruce L. Gillingham, the hospital’s director of surgical services.

Gillingham, an orthopedic surgeon, amputated numerous shattered limbs while serving in a combat hospital during the bloody battle for Fallouja in 2004.

The percentage of wounded who are amputees is higher in the Iraq war than in previous conflicts because improved body armor is helping troops survive blasts that in the past would have been fatal. One military study showed that 2.5{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d} of injuries result in amputations.

California and Texas, followed by Florida and Georgia, have the highest numbers of U.S. service personnel listed as amputees from the U.S. missions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Starting in June, the hospital anticipates caring for up to 50 amputees a year once the new center is fully staffed.

In coordination with the Veterans Affairs hospitals in Long Beach and La Jolla, Calif., the hospital will provide additional surgery, fittings for prosthetics and rehabilitation, which can take from six to 24 months.

“We have to teach them how to live on their own,” said Lt. Phillip Chorosevic, acting head of the physical and occupational therapy department.

Many of the injured now being treated here are eager to return to Iraq.

“I’d love to go back, that’s where my guys are,” said Army Staff Sgt. David Parker, who is undergoing rehabilitation to regain partial use of his right arm, injured by an explosion. The naval hospital treats patients from all branches of the military.

Navy Petty Officer Alexander Morales, who lost both legs below the knee in a shipboard accident in August, soon will leave for extensive therapy at Brooke Army Medical Center.

Part of his job will be to provide San Diego officials with a patients-eye view of the Brooke program so that it can be copied in San Diego.

“It’s going to be huge to have that kind of program in San Diego, so guys can stay near their families,” he said. “The family provides emotional and psychological support.”

Some of the injuries that doctors here are treating are not visible.

About a third of the Marines wounded in Iraq also suffer from post-traumatic stress, including nightmares, sleeplessness and flashbacks, said Lt. Cmdr. Robert McLay, a staff psychiatrist. Therapy is both individual and group; the Navy is also sending psychiatrists to Iraq.

“We’re seeing it more in the younger kids,” McLay said. “There’s more of them, they tend to be out on the front lines and, being younger, they don’t have the social setups that can help.”

Doctors admit being taken aback by the severity of blast injuries from improvised explosive devices, which have emerged as the insurgents’ weapon of choice against U.S. and coalition troops traveling in convoys.

“These are worse than any injuries we’ve seen before,” said Wandel, who has done four full facial reconstructions and recently reconstructed a Marine’s badly injured penis.

With 6,000 military and civilian staff members, the Naval Medical Center and its branch clinics handle millions of visits annually by the estimated half million active-duty personnel, retirees and their family members in the region. Medical personnel also deploy with combat units and the San Diego-based hospital ship Mercy.

The start-up cost for the new casualty care program is set at about $10 million and will require a $7-million to $8-million boost in the 532-bed hospital’s $450-million annual budget.

“The whole philosophy is to treat these kids like they’re injured athletes,” said Rear Adm. Brian G. Brannman, commanding officer of the Naval Medical Center. “You don’t want 19- and 20-year-olds suddenly feeling like they’re 50.

“We want them rock-climbing, doing marathons, doing everything,” he said. “We want them to be able to take this as far as they can.”

Although the surgical and rehabilitation programs for amputees and other gravely injured patients at Walter Reed and Brooke are considered excellent, patients often are required to spend months away from their families.

Some spouses try to relocate to be near the hospitals, but that adds a financial burden to the trauma of having an injured loved one.

“It can all fall apart if you don’t have family support,” said Capt. Lisa Arnold, the hospital’s organizational ombudsman.

Like evolving battlefield tactics, military medicine is adapting to conditions that were not anticipated when the assault on the Taliban in Afghanistan and the regime in Baghdad began, officials said.

“War is going to be a part of our lives for a long time,” Wandel said

Veterans returning from tours of duty overseas face a bleak job market at home, according to a published report.

Employment prospects are especially dismal for young veterans and for those searching in Illinois, the Chicago Sun-Times reported in today’s editions.

“I’ve filled out dozens of applications,” said Blue Island resident Angelina Summerfield, 28, who cannot find a job despite a resume that includes two tours in Iraq as a Marine sergeant.

Nationally, the unemployment rate for vets between ages 20 and 24 was 16 percent in 2005, compared with 9 percent for non-veterans in the same age group, the Sun-Times reported.

The overall unemployment rate last year was 5.1 percent.

Experts cite a variety of reasons for veterans’ high unemployment.

Managers today are less likely to have personal connections to the military and don’t seek soldiers out as job applicants, said Robert Bruno, a professor at the Institute of Labor and Industrial Relations at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

The conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan also have not boosted the U.S. economy.

Michael McCoy, 24, said he had to fight a perceived stigma from potential employers who were worried about psychological problems like post-traumatic stress disorder.

“You’ve been to war, and they think you’re a dangerous guy,” said McCoy, who was diagnosed with PTSD after returning to Chicago Heights from Iraq in April 2004.

It took McCoy five months to find a part-time job as a package handler at United Parcel Service, at a pay rate of $8.50 an hour and without benefits.

Illinois is last in the country when it comes to getting jobs for veterans, according to the U.S. Labor Department, a ranking that state employment officials dispute.

Federal labor officials say 34 percent of unemployed veterans who asked for help from the Illinois Department of Employment Security found jobs last year, but state officials say new data boosts Illinois’ ranking.

Even using the state’s statistics, Illinois performed better than just seven other states, the Sun-Times reported.

“It makes me angry, and it’s discouraging to thousands of veterans in Illinois who have served their country,” said Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill.

The low ranking is deceiving because Illinois’ younger veterans are more likely than their counterparts in other states to enroll in college, state officials said.

Illinois is one of the few states to offer veterans four years of college benefits, on top of the money they get through the federal GI Bill.

In the last five years, the number of Illinois veterans using GI Bill benefits has risen more than 53 percent, compared to 20 percent nationally, the Sun-Times reported.

“A lot of our younger veterans went into the military so they could get benefits to go to school,” said Lane Knox, who heads Illinois’ veterans employment representatives. “They don’t want to work. But if someone’s taking statistics, all they see is this person is not working.”

(© 2006 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)

Lt. Col. Edgar Montalvo has been deployed overseas six times in 10 years. First Sgt. Brandi Schiff has spent more time overseas for the military in the last six years than in the United States. Montalvo and Schiff aren’t full-time soldiers. They’re Army Reserve officers. And they say their civilian careers have suffered as a result.

Montalvo had been with the same employer for 19 years. Then, six weeks after returning from an overseas deployment, he got a negative job review and immediately accepted a buyout to leave. Schiff was laid off six hours after telling her bosses the Army was sending her to Afghanistan.

At one time, being a reservist or National Guardsman typically meant one weekend away each month and two weeks each summer. Today, with wartime deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan, part-time soldiers find themselves being called up again and again, for months, even years at a time. Since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, more than 542,000 reservists and guardsmen have been activated.

“There are only two types of people in the Reserves today: those who have already been deployed and those who are going to be deployed,” says Montalvo, 45, of Tinley Park, who returned from Iraq last October.

STATE OF SHAME:
A SUN-TIMES INVESTIGATION

PART 1: Where are all the jobs?
Veterans nationwide are facing a tough job market, but in Illinois the post-military opportunities are even more scarce.
• Front line to the unemployment line
• Trading a home base for a Home Depot

PART 2: Reservists fight to keep jobs
More than half a million reservists and Guardsmen have been called to active duty in Iraq. When they come home, will they have jobs?

RELATED GRAPHICS

Unemployment, veterans and non-veterans
Veterans have historically had a higher unemployment rate, but among 20- to 24-year-olds, that rate has been climbing dramatically since the beginning of the war in Iraq.

Illinois vs. Indiana
Among Illinois veterans — those who served from World War II to Iraq — the employment rate currently is the same as non-veterans. But in neighboring Indiana, veterans enjoy a higher rate of employment than non-veterans.

And the military is only going to increase its dependence on reservists because that’s cheaper than maintaining a larger full-time military, says Montalvo, who leads a Reserve unit in Forest Park.

With reservists away from their jobs more, some employers are balking at holding those jobs for them when they return, as federal law requires. Others are laying off or firing reservists and guardsmen, or making things so uncomfortable they quit, a Chicago Sun-Times investigation found.

The number of complaints filed with the U.S. Labor Department accusing employers of job discrimination against reservists and guardsmen went up 38 percent from the military buildup that began after the Sept. 11 attacks until 2005 — from 908 complaints in 2001 to 1,465. It dipped last year to 1,320 — a decline the Labor Department attributes to its aggressive efforts to get the word out to employers about the law. Illinois has seen a similar pattern of complaints.

‘Laws are weak’

People who try to remain in the military part time sometimes face pressure at work to either leave the military or leave their jobs, lawsuits and interviews with returning reservists and investigators show.

“As long as reservists are getting deployed as we are, employers are going to get hip to the law and figure out how to beat it,” says Tice Ridley, 33, an Army reservist who plans to quit as an investigator for the Cook County public defender’s office and go full time with the Army.

The Iraq war veteran filed a job-discrimination complaint in 2004, telling the Labor Department his union president was told Ridley wouldn’t be promoted because “it would hurt the efficiency of the office if he were deployed.”

The public defender’s office denied that. Labor Department investigators didn’t find any violations. His case remains in union arbitration.

“The laws are weak,” says Ridley. “If that’s all we have, as soldiers we’re screwed.”

PROTECTING RESERVISTS

The Uniformed Services Employment and Re-employment Rights Act — known as USERRA — protects military reservists and National Guardsmen from job discrimination based upon their membership in the military. Reservists and guardsmen returning from deployment are entitled to be reinstated to the job they held before being activated — with the same benefits, raises and promotions they’d be due if they had never left. Employers also are required to excuse reservists and guardsmen for drills and annual training. Also, though they don’t have to pay them for time missed while away on duty, employers can’t count it against their paid vacation days. And reservists and guardsmen cannot be fired solely because of their military service.

Some companies say they’re just watching the bottom line and can’t afford to be without their employees for the extended periods now demanded of them — though, in interviews, no employer would complain on the record, citing fears their comments might be viewed as unpatriotic or as an admission they discriminate.

“From an employer’s point of view, hiring a National Guardsman or reservist is a riskier venture that could potentially lead to higher costs,” says Victor Devinatz, a professor at Illinois State University’s College of Business whose specialty is labor and management. “They might want to be patriotic and support the war, but they also have a business to run.”

‘A waste’ to complain

About a fourth of the complaints filed last year in Illinois with the Labor Department claiming job discrimination against military members were “granted” or “settled.” In some of those cases, the employers reinstated the workers. In some, they awarded back pay or vacation time, or promoted them. In total, the employers also paid out more than $72,000 to the workers. But in nearly a third of the cases, Labor Department investigators ruled the complaints had “no merit,” or they couldn’t find sufficient evidence that the employers had violated the law.

Many complaints by part-time soldiers against employers involve workers in highly skilled jobs who were fired or laid off, or were given poor performance reviews when they went away on active duty. In interviews, they say they expected the government to ardently defend them, but they say the investigators sometimes did too little to pursue their claims.

“It was a complete waste of time,” says Schiff, who has been in the Army Reserve for 16 years.

She filed a complaint with the Labor Department in 2003 after being laid off from a public relations job at the firm Citigate Dewe Rogerson in Chicago in 2002 — hours after she informed her employer she was being deployed to Afghanistan.

Schiff, 34, is now deputy director of the Army’s public affairs office in Chicago. She says she regrets filing her complaint because her Labor Department investigator didn’t aggressively pursue her case.

“She didn’t call one person,” says Schiff. “She just talked to the lawyers of the company that I worked for and believed what they had to say. Then, she called me in and said: ‘Case closed. There is no cause.’ ”

Company blamed layoffs

According to the Labor’s Department’s file on the Schiff investigation, obtained by the Sun-Times under the federal Freedom of Information Act, Citigate Dewe Rogerson representatives told a government investigator that Schiff was part of a companywide layoff and wasn’t singled out because of her military involvement.

“But I was the only one in Chicago laid off — and, by coincidence, the only one in the Army, too,” says Schiff.

Schiff told the Labor Department investigator that, earlier, she complained that a more recent hire was given a raise but she wasn’t. She says the supervisor told her that was because she’d been “off playing Army in Bosnia” eight months before getting deployed to Afghanistan.

“Yes, it’s technically illegal to do what they did to me,” Schiff says. “But they sure got away with it. And it wasn’t that hard.”

Citigate Dewe Rogerson did not respond to calls requesting comment.

Exceptions to the law

Schiff complains that the law meant to protect reservists’ jobs shouldn’t allow the exceptions it does — for instance, the Labor Department has allowed employers to cite companywide layoffs or economic hardship in successfully defending themselves against discrimination complaints.

“There are situations where that is possible,” agrees John Muckelbauer, a senior investigator for the Labor Department. But he adds, “It is rare. The employer can claim that it is impossible or that they are unable to re-employ the individual. But that’s not the end of it. They have to prove that that’s the case.”

The law is the federal Uniformed Services Employment and Re-employment Rights Act of 1994, known as USERRA. Enacted after complaints during the Persian Gulf War, it requires companies to reinstate reservists and guardsmen who are returning to work from active military duty — with all the benefits, seniority and pay raises they would have gotten if they never left. It also says reservists and guardsmen can’t be fired or denied promotions because of their military duty.

Claim: fired for being deployed

But Army Reserve Lt. Col. Charles Schlom says in a federal lawsuit that’s just what his former employer did. An Army reservist for 17 years, the 44-year-old Algonquin man was fired from his job as Midwest regional sales manager for Marley Cooling Technologies in March 2005 — after he’d told co-workers he’d soon be deployed to Afghanistan but before he got his official orders and told his bosses

Schlom filed a complaint with the Labor Department.

“It was absolutely, completely worthless,” he says of the agency’s investigation. “I don’t think they did anything.”

The Labor Department initially sent Schlom a letter saying it was recommending its lawyers take his case to court. Muckelbauer says that was because Marley wasn’t complying with an investigator’s requests for information. But when the company finally provided information, the agency decided Schlom had been fired for cause.

“The reasons cited were lack of knowledge of the product, confrontational manner with various representatives and that, overall, he didn’t seem to produce the way the company wanted him to produce,” Muckelbauer says.

Schlom says he received sales awards every year for three years before he was fired and exceeded sales goals every year.

He says the Labor Department never told him of its final decision. So he hired a civilian lawyer, George Aucoin, who is also a colonel with the Marine Reserve.

Aucoin, who specializes in representing reservists and guardsmen in job-discrimination cases, describes Schlom’s firing as a “preemptive termination. When they found out that he was soon to receive orders for Afghanistan, they took that opportunity to wrongly terminate him. They thought they were covered because they did it before he had his official orders in hand.”

Representatives of Marley Cooling Technologies, which is based in Overland Park, Kan., did not return repeated phone calls for comment.

‘Bigger issues to tackle’

Aucoin says the Labor Department doesn’t pursue cases like this, involving just one person. Instead, he says, the agency focuses on bigger cases that it’s more likely to win — like the government’s class-action lawsuit, filed in January, accusing American Airlines of reducing benefits of its pilots who’d taken military leave.

Veterans’ representatives with the Illinois Department of Employment Security say they advise veterans not to tell potential employers they’re in the Reserve — though such advice goes against agency policy.

“If you’re not asked, don’t answer. It’s none of their business,” says one Illinois veterans-employment representative, who spoke on condition he not be named, saying agency officials told him and other reps not to talk to a reporter. “After you’re hired, say: ‘Oh, by the way, I have drill on the weekends once a month.’ Now, let’s see what happens. Now, you have a federal case.”

Difficult decisions

In November 2003, Edgar Montalvo took a buyout from Peoples Gas, where he’d worked for 19 years. He’d been back at work just six weeks after returning from an eight-month deployment to Belize when he was told he was going to receive a negative job review — his first as a manager, he says.

Montalvo says he was criticized for not doing enough — the result, he says, of an additional staffer being hired while he was gone, leaving him less to do.

Instead of staying and filing a complaint with the Labor Department, he asked for a buyout.

“I wasn’t going to be in any key position or [on any key] projects because management couldn’t afford to give it to me and risk having me gone,” says Montalvo, who started as a meter reader and, by the time he left, was a cash analyst with an MBA from the University of Chicago.

Montalvo has 25 years with the Reserve. Beside Iraq and Belize, he has seen duty in Honduras, Kenya, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Kuwait. He’s up for a promotion next year, to colonel.

“If I hadn’t been in the Reserves, I’d be a CFO by now,” he says — a company’s chief financial officer.

Rod Sierra, a spokesman for Peoples Gas, wouldn’t talk specifically about Montalvo. But Sierra says the company is supportive of its reservists.

After Montalvo left Peoples Gas, he ended up taking a job for a while in St. Louis, but his wife and two children stayed in Tinley Park. He’d come home to them on weekends. After a year of that, he got deployed to Iraq. When he came home in October, he decided to look for another job. It took five months.

During that job search, his wife, a former reservist, suggested Montalvo leave his military status off his resume. He couldn’t.

“I don’t know that I want to work for a firm that isn’t enthusiastic about me being in the Reserves,” he says. “This is who I am. It’s what I do. I serve my country

As a captain in the Army, Mike Mahon got plenty of salutes. These days, he gets nods and the occasional polite wave as he walks the aisles of his current base — a Home Depot store in Oswego.

Mahon, 29, went to work at Home Depot after four years as an Army signal officer, commanding 50 soldiers in a mobile telephone unit where he maintained communications between tanks and scouts.

On Dec. 26, having completed the company’s two-year store-leadership program, he became a store manager. He was one of 1,142 people hired into the program when it was launched in 2002 for veterans who had been junior officers in the military. More than 100 of the recruits now run stores for Home Depot, which has a reputation as one of the most welcoming companies for veterans.

“I think what the Home Depot is looking for is people who have a high level of execution and leadership,” said Mahon, who was attracted by Home Depot chief executive Robert Nardelli’s reputation for hiring and recruiting vets.