Nassau News

Recently, the United States government has come under fire for the medical treatment that injured soldiers have received upon returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in the aftermath of 9/11.

However, perhaps our focus should also turn to what will come of veterans when they return from Iraq and Afghanistan.

The National Coalition for Homeless Veterans estimates that 23 percent of all homeless people -- and 33 percent of all homeless men -- are armed service veterans and that the majority of homeless veterans are homeless because a lack of employment opportunity.

Since the beginning of the War in Iraq four years ago, over one million soldiers have been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan according to a Salon report published two years ago.

There are about 141,000 troops currently in Iraq and more are following.

At least 560,000 National Guard members have dutifully fought alongside full-time troops and, according to a 2005 Defense Department survey, at least 14 percent have reported having difficulty reclaiming their jobs.

Although the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act was established in 1994 to protect the jobs of reservists, the act is not always enforced. So, outside organizations are working with Veterans Affairs to help veterans reassemble the lives that they left to serve in the War on Terror.

Locally, HempsteadWorks, a department of Workforce New York and the New York State Department of Labor, offers services to veterans looking for work. Among them are access to specialists like Peter Paftinos, a local veterans’ employment representative, and Charles Anatra, a disabled veterans’ outreach program specialist.

“These guys help with skills assessment, résumés, cover letters, research of the job market and they also help translate military positions into civilian world job descriptions, and that can be pretty tricky,” Tom Rielly, the veterans program coordinator for the New York State Department of Labor, said.

HempsteadWorks referred 489 veterans to jobs in 2005.

Overall, New York State employment programs referred 2,633 veterans to jobs in 2005. The figures from 2005 are down from 2004 when 747 veterans from Hempstead and 3,790 veterans from all over the state were referred to jobs. However, in 2003, only 452 veterans from Hempstead and 2,303 veterans from New York were referred to jobs.

While looking at the figures, it is important to remember that after Saddam Hussein’s government was removed from power by the U.S. Army in 2003, many soldiers were able to return to the United States.

These numbers do not reflect all services rendered to Hempstead and New York state veterans, just the number who received job referrals.

The veterans services provided are for soldiers that are separating or retiring under honorable conditions. Another popular service is for soldiers preparing to transition from military life to civilian life.

“Our Transitional Assistance Program helps soldiers that have only three or four months left to serve and we see a lot of people signing up for that,” Rielly said, “It’s tough for the soldiers to transition from military life to civilian life and we can help them start the process before they’re forced to by helping them find employment.”

“A lot of guys don’t get hired when they come back because of the stigma attached to them,” said Pete Paftinos of HempsteadWorks. “My generation allowed that stigma to become attached to Vietnam Veterans that were going nuts. [But,] it’s a unique situation soldiers find themselves in when they return and it’s by our own misdoings,” Paftinos said, “What a lot of folks don’t understand is that a veteran finishes what he starts and he absolutely understands how to follow directions.”

Paftinos also said soldiers face difficulty because their military training is not recognized in the civilian world.

“We have guys that could fix aircraft in their sleep because they’ve been jet engine mechanics with the army for years, but that experience doesn’t mean anything once they’re out of the military,” Paftinos said.

HempsteadWorks uses America's Job Bank, the New York State Job Bank and the Workforce New York Talent Bank in helping veterans find work.

HempsteadWorks representatives search through jobs posted to see if their veterans might qualify for positions, the representatives also teach the veterans how to do a search themselves and post résumés on the websites so that employers can find them.

The organization also helps disabled veterans find work under Section 55-c of the New York State Civil Service Law. This legislation, started in 1987 by late New York Assemblyman Richard Connors and late New York Senator Michael Tully, mandates that the Civil Service Commission designate 300 positions -- normally filled through “competitive examination” -- for disabled wartime veterans.

“I’ve been doing this job for 25 years, I’ve seen everything: the guys coming back from Grenada, Somalia and Bosnia. Now we’re going to see a lot of guys come back from Iraq and Afghanistan and they’re going to have a lot more to worry about than getting a job,” Paftinos said. “Some guys are going to come back with [post traumatic stress disorder] whether they saw combat or from having to transport 20,000 gallons of highly explosive jet fuel that could blow up from just one bullet -- most civilians couldn’t handle stress like that after only one day,” Paftinos explained.

“It’s important that veterans understand the resources we have available, I have direct access to medical centers -- I could get someone a counselor within 10 minutes or get a homeless vet off the streets,” Paftinos said, “We’re able to give [veterans] access to any assistance they need.”

Although veterans have come to depend on local services for employment assistance, it is still unclear whether these local organizations, or the Veterans’ Affairs, will be able to accommodate the large number of U.S. soldiers that will eventually return from Iraq and Afghanistan. As Rielly put it, “We just do what we can.”

To read or contribute to the reporter's blog for this article, click here

[This article was written as a student project for Professor Mo Krochmal’s Journalism 80 class in online journalism at Hofstra University. To learn more about this class and to see the students' work for the Spring 2007 semester, visit the class blog.]