TruthOut10
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- Dec 3, 2012
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In TULSA This is what the end of a decade of war looked like in Oklahoma a few weeks ago: ex-soldiers in cheap new business suits; human resources managers with salesman smiles and stacks of glossy fliers; a former Marine speaking to a television news crew about the tough times and nightmares he has had since coming home.
Capt. Mike Bolton moved through the hundreds gathered at the convention center with a black binder of 41 résumés. It was yet another veterans job fair. How many had he been to since his battalion returned from Afghanistan last spring? Twenty? Thirty? Boltons job is to help his fellow Army National Guard soldiers find careers after their combat tours. If you want bodies, he tells potential employers over and over, I am the person you need to call.
Everyone says they want to hire veterans. Big U.S. firms have pledged through the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to hire more than 200,000 over the next five years. Congress has delivered tax credits worth as much as $5,600 to any business willing to hire an unemployed veteran $9,600 if the vet is disabled.
President Obama has made the moral case. No one who fights for this country overseas should ever have to fight for a job, he said as he laid a wreath in Arlington National Cemetery last fall.
Here in Oklahoma, Bolton knows better. When hiring managers flip through his binder of résumés, they arent thinking about whether the nation has an obligation to its combat veterans. They are weighing whether they can really afford to take on one more employee in this uncertain economy, whether it makes sense to wait just a few more months.
The questions that consume Bolton, meanwhile, are specific to a population of ex-soldiers struggling with a particular set of postwar problems. How can he help a solid Guard captain with a forgettable résuméshine? How does he find a job for a 35-year-old soldier who cant remember to pay her electricity bill? What can he do to help a soldier hold on to his job when he says he came home from combat hating humanity?
Each of these questions is, in its own way, a legacy of Americas wars.
After decade of war, troops still struggling to find work - The Washington Post
Capt. Mike Bolton moved through the hundreds gathered at the convention center with a black binder of 41 résumés. It was yet another veterans job fair. How many had he been to since his battalion returned from Afghanistan last spring? Twenty? Thirty? Boltons job is to help his fellow Army National Guard soldiers find careers after their combat tours. If you want bodies, he tells potential employers over and over, I am the person you need to call.
Everyone says they want to hire veterans. Big U.S. firms have pledged through the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to hire more than 200,000 over the next five years. Congress has delivered tax credits worth as much as $5,600 to any business willing to hire an unemployed veteran $9,600 if the vet is disabled.
President Obama has made the moral case. No one who fights for this country overseas should ever have to fight for a job, he said as he laid a wreath in Arlington National Cemetery last fall.
Here in Oklahoma, Bolton knows better. When hiring managers flip through his binder of résumés, they arent thinking about whether the nation has an obligation to its combat veterans. They are weighing whether they can really afford to take on one more employee in this uncertain economy, whether it makes sense to wait just a few more months.
The questions that consume Bolton, meanwhile, are specific to a population of ex-soldiers struggling with a particular set of postwar problems. How can he help a solid Guard captain with a forgettable résuméshine? How does he find a job for a 35-year-old soldier who cant remember to pay her electricity bill? What can he do to help a soldier hold on to his job when he says he came home from combat hating humanity?
Each of these questions is, in its own way, a legacy of Americas wars.
After decade of war, troops still struggling to find work - The Washington Post
