Bulletin E-Edition:
more photosKandice Newton, a veterans employment representative with WorkSource Oregon, helps veteran Andrew Gaede, 36, with an application for a job with the Oregon Youth Challenge program at the Oregon Employment Department office in Bend on Tuesday. Gaede served with the 101st Airborne Division in Afghanistan in 2002.
Pete Erickson / The Bulletin
Returning from deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan, Central Oregon’s veterans are left wondering, Where are our jobs?
By Erin Golden / The Bulletin
Published: July 16. 2009 4:00AM PSTWhen Oregon Army National Guard Spc. Karly Cooper came back to Redmond after a nearly yearlong deployment to Iraq, she thought it would be fairly easy to find a job.
She started sending out résumés but didn’t hear anything back from potential employers. One month of searching turned into two, then four, then six. By the time Cooper finally found work in July 2008, seven months into her search, she had applied for nearly 90 jobs.
Cooper, 28, remembers that period of her life as a frustrating time — a time when she thought she’d be able to transition easily back into civilian life with the help of employers who would understand the skills she’d learned in the military and why they would make her a good fit for their workplace. But she also knows she was lucky to have found a job when she did. Today, with unemployment nearly 17 percent in Deschutes County and higher elsewhere in Central Oregon, many veterans are finding themselves out of work and in a situation they never imagined when they thought about coming home.
“We’re everyday people, too — we need a house, a roof over our head,” Cooper said. “We go and fight for our country and we come back and the people that we’re defending, basically it feels like they’re not helping us.”
Kandice Newton, the Central Oregon local veterans employment representative for WorkSource Oregon, said she’s busier than ever, helping veterans market their skills and reaching out to employers — even though the recession has resulted in cuts to some of the resources available for veterans needing jobs.
In June, Newton said about 1,500 veterans from Crook, Deschutes and Jefferson counties were enrolled with her office and about 1,110 of those were claiming unemployment benefits. In June 2008, about 600 veterans were enrolled with the office, including about 400 who were claiming benefits.
“I know that the number of veterans we’ve been working with and claiming unemployment has doubled, tripled, because of the economy,” she said.
Losing jobs, losing funding
When times were better, Central Oregon was an employment hot spot for many veterans returning from Afghanistan and Iraq, including several who found work in the construction and aviation industries. Back then, Newton said she had a long list of employers to whom she could refer veterans. Often, she could give employers an added incentive: a state grant that would pay for half a veteran’s wages in his or her first 30 days of employment, including on-the-job training or college courses.
But as the economy started to slow, those businesses stopped hiring and, in some cases, began laying off workers or shutting down altogether.
At the same time, the grant money available for veterans looking for jobs began to dry up. The funding program was cut off earlier this month. Losing that money, Newton said, is a big blow for many veterans looking for work in a difficult job market.
“It pretty much gave an employer an incentive to hire that veteran, based on (the) fact that they would only have to pay half of their pay for 30 days,” she said. “It was a way to have somebody come in, to (acquire) the skills, strengths and experience — and not having that is going to definitely impact veterans a little more.”
Newton said additional job training is often crucial for veterans, who might have years of military experience but little on their résumé in the way of more traditional jobs. Often, she said, veterans might have learned a variety of useful skills in the military that they have a hard time translating for employers back home. A soldier who worked in flight management, for example, might be good in an administrative role, or a combat medic could transition easily to an EMT position.
“Some of the feedback I’ve received for employers is when military personnel apply, they’re using acronyms. Employers are saying, ‘I don’t understand what this person does and how this relates.’ … So we’re helping them move away from acronyms and get them into civilian terms.”
In their own words
Bend veteran Andrew Gaede, 36, said it’s a problem he’s encountered during his months-long search for work. Gaede, who served in the Army and Army National Guard for 12 years, deployed to Afghanistan in 2002 with the Army’s 101st Airborne Division. When he returned from overseas, Gaede lived in Redmond for a year and then moved to Albany for a job driving trucks for Knife River.
But after he was laid off and moved to Bend to be closer to family, Gaede said he found finding a similar job — or any job at all — wasn’t easy. Since March, he’s applied for nearly 10 jobs ranging from dump truck driver to nightclub bouncer, but he hasn’t had any luck. Gaede worries employers don’t take into account everything he learned as a squad leader in the military, from reliability to remaining calm in difficult situations.
“It’s good and bad because when you’re in the military,” Gaede said, “you have discipline, you’re reliable, on time, all that stuff, but if you ain’t got the experience, they’re not going to hire you. And if they don’t give you the opportunity to get the experience, you don’t get the experience.”
Marine Corps veteran Chad Russell, 25, of Bend, who was deployed to Iraq three times, agrees. After moving back to Bend from California, Russell sent out about 50 applications over a six-month period before finally landing a job at Lowe’s in Redmond.
He said many employers just don’t know what to expect when they hire people with military experience.
“I think there’s still a lot of apprehension,” he said. “There’s a lack of awareness about military life in the community. They see guys fighting on TV and mostly see negative stuff on TV, so they don’t quite know what’s going on with all the organization and communication and leadership skills that are being built. These are guys that know how to be told what to do, but they can also lead. And in the civilian world, I think that’s golden for businesses to have people like that.”
Laws provide some protection
Military veterans receive preference points when applying for some government jobs, but in the private sector, companies don’t have to make any special allowances.
Soldiers who are deployed while working in the civilian world, however, are entitled to hold onto those jobs while they are away.
The Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act of 1994 prohibits employers from discriminating against military personnel and protects the jobs of veterans who leave for duty.
And in Oregon, a new law signed by Gov. Ted Kulongoski last month mirrors the federal regulations — and makes it easier for veterans who face work-related discrimination to challenge employers in court.
Before the law was passed, legal cases related to veterans’ employment rights fell under federal jurisdiction, but the cases now can be heard in local circuit courts, said Bob Elliott, executive director of the Oregon Committee of Employer Support of Guard and Reserve, an organization that helps veterans navigate the civilian job world during and after their military service.
Elliott said employers in Oregon and around the country are becoming more aware of the rules about employing veterans because so many soldiers have been deployed over the last few years.
About 150 members of the Oregon Army National Guard’s Redmond-based G Troop, 82nd Cavalry deployed to Iraq in 2004 and now, about 110 Central Oregonians are headed to Iraq with the Bend-based 1st Squadron, 82nd Cavalry of the Guard’s 41st Infantry Brigade Combat Team.
About 3,000 Oregon soldiers are involved in the deployment, which is the state’s largest since World War II.
Employers’ perspective
Elliott said about 1,250 of the approximately 3,000 Oregon soldiers involved in the 41st Brigade’s deployment to Iraq were working in civilian jobs before they left home. About 970 reported being unemployed, while the rest of the soldiers were students or military employees prior to deployment.
For soldiers whose companies have to cut back while they’re away, Elliott said the rules are a bit more complicated. He said his organization instructs veterans on how to get back in touch with their employers and what kinds of questions they should ask if they find that their position has been cut. “We coach them to ask questions: ‘Who all got laid off? Was I considered along with everybody else?’” he said.
He said employers who made significant cuts and likely would have laid off the soldier if he’d been at home are likely not required to provide a veteran with a job. But if a veteran’s job was cut because the person was gone, it could be a legal issue, he said.
Most of the time, Elliott said employers try to avoid problems by asking questions before they make any reductions.
“I’ve been full-time for five or six years, out educating employers with outreach, and employers (are) now calling us, asking us for guidance on these selections and cutbacks,” he said.
But for many veterans, the biggest hurdle is simply getting a foot in the door. Some said they worry employers hesitate to hire veterans that remain in the military because they’re afraid they’ll be deployed again.
And while the veterans said they understand its a tough market for any job-seeker, they said employers should give people with military experience a second look.
“As much as people want to say they aren’t forgetting what is happening over there, they are.” Russell said. “They get too consumed in their lives and they are forgetting what these young men and women are sacrificing.”
Erin Golden can be reached at 541-617-7837 or at egolden@bendbulletin.com.
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