Disabled blind veterans heading to unemployment line after VA kills contract

47 workers lose jobs after IFB loses contract appeal

Winston-Salem Journal
By Richard Craver
September 10, 2019

“Already, the VA has cancelled numerous contracts held by AbilityOne qualified nonprofit agencies, which will result in the near-immediate termination of employment of hundreds of blind and severely disabled individuals, many of whom are veterans themselves.

A worker processes lenses after polishing in the optical department at IFB Solutions on Tuesday in Winston-Salem. Walt Unks/Journal

A federal judge has denied a stay request that would have allowed IFB Solutions Inc. to keep one of its three optical contracts with the U.S. Departments of Veterans Affairs, leaving 47 workers without jobs.

The Winston-Salem nonprofit agency said Tuesday that the contract was terminated Sept. 4.

“We are devastated for our employees whose positions have been eliminated with the loss of this VA contract,” David Horton, IFB’s president and chief executive, said in a statement.

Horton said it appears likely the other contracts will end on Sept. 30 and Oct. 31, affecting an additional combined 90 employees. Of the overall 137 jobs, 76 are held by employees who are blind and 15 by veterans.

IFB has been providing prescription eyewear to the VA since the late 1990s. The Winston-Salem company is the largest employer of the blind in the United States with about 1,000 employees overall and 556 locally.
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Members of Congress Shocked About VA When They Were There All Along?

VA audit: Overworked Seattle office didn’t read mail, told veterans they’d lose benefits
The News Tribune
BY ADAM ASHTON
Staff writer
October 2, 2015

Dozens of West Coast military veterans incorrectly received letters indicating they’d lose unemployment benefits after an overworked Department of Veterans Affairs office in Seattle lost track of records the veterans had submitted, according to a VA Inspector General report released this week.

The mail audit stemmed from a complaint that suggested about 1,000 pieces of unread mail from veterans were being stored indefinitely in a yellow bucket without a response from employees assigned to evaluate benefits claims.

In some cases, the complaint alleged, veterans were told they’d lose unemployment benefits because they had not returned information to the office in a timely manner even though they had met their deadlines.

The unemployment benefits are given to veterans who can’t hold a job because of a service-connected disability.

Auditors who visited the Seattle office in April did not find a bucket loaded with unread letters, as had been alleged in the complaint. However, they did talk to employees who were familiar with it and called it the “yellow bucket project.”

They also took a sampling of 132 employment questionnaires and determined that a fifth of the veterans had been sent letters indicating a reduction or cancellation of benefits, even though they’d mailed forms that should have allowed them to continue receiving money.
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WOW seems really shocking! That is until you are reminded of how long all of this has been going on.

These came out in 2012

VA office stacked 37,000 files on cabinets after running out of storage
NBC News
Tuesday Aug 14, 2012

Staff at the office began having trouble storing files in 2005 when that location, as part of a national initiative, started collecting and processing disability claims prior to a service member's discharge. The office was one of two regional centers in the country to handle such cases, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs. Staff tried to transfer or retire 50,000 files in recent years, as well request more storage space. The office was denied extra room because of a lack of money and few external storage options.

Veterans Wait for Benefits as Claims Pile Up
New York Times
By JAMES DAO
SEPT. 27, 2012

Numbers tell the story. Last year, veterans filed more than 1.3 million claims, double the number in 2001. Despite having added nearly 4,000 new workers since 2008, the agency did not keep pace, completing less than 80 percent of its inventory.

This year, the agency has already completed more than one million claims for the third consecutive year. Yet it is still taking about eight months to process the average claim, two months longer than a decade ago. As of Monday, 890,000 pension and compensation claims were pending.

But as you can see, that didn't end the wait for veterans.

Answers demanded after vets’ disability claims found in cabinet
San Francisco Chronicle
By Vivian Ho
April 21, 2015

One number will hang over a congressional hearing Wednesday looking into mismanagement at a U.S. Veterans Affairs regional office in Oakland: 13,184.

That’s the number of compensation and disability claims that were found in 2012, wrongfully stashed in a filing cabinet — some dating to the mid-1990s and many unprocessed. But what the number represents remains the source of fierce debate.

Back in 2008 members of Congress were "shocked" and said they were doing something about it. Oh but that was when there were 879,291 VA claims in the backlog.

The Senate version also includes an amendment that offers $50 million to speed up the processing of disability claims. It would pay for pilot programs to reduce the average waiting time -- which currently is six months -- for rulings on claims.

As of March, the VA reported 879,291 claims were in backlog from the same time last year.

Cullinan says, “This is just the first step in the VA funding process. It gives broad outlines of spending for the Department which the Appropriations Subcommittees will use to find specific amounts and tasks within the VA. The process is not complete until the president signs the Appropriations Bill.” The Federal government’s 2009 fiscal year begins Oct. 1, 2008.

Around the same time contractors were taking over processing claims, like Lockheed Martin as in this report from Army Times

And of the original 133,057 potentially eligible veterans, 8,763 died before their cases could be reviewed for retroactive payments, according to the report.

In February, the backlog was said to be “more than 39,000” cases. Jonas said she had been assured that the backlog would be cleared by April. That did not happen, according to the subcommittee report, because Lockheed Martin, the contractor hired in July 2006 to compute the complex retroactive pay awards, had difficulty making the computations fast enough to eliminate the backlog quickly. The complexity of the computations also hindered Lockheed Martin’s ability to develop software to automate the process.

Murray was asking about VA's response to suicides back in 2008

In asking Peake about what the VA is doing to reach out to struggling veterans who may not know about VA resources available to them, Murray referenced a VA study that found that Guard or Reserve members accounted for 53 percent of the veteran suicides from 2001, when the war in Afghanistan began, through the end of 2005. The study was made public yesterday in an Associated Press story.

As you can find more on your own with a simple Google search result, nothing should shock members of congress anymore since most of them have been there all along.

Veterans battle PTSD stigma -- even if they don't have it

Veterans battle PTSD stigma -- even if they don't have it

By Stacy Lu

Fresh from a tour of duty in Iraq where he earned a Bronze Star, Ryan Gallucci didn’t expect a simple job interview to be such a memorably unpleasant experience.

“I was interviewing with a P.R. agency when my military service came up. Some of the questions got a little prying. ‘Oh, so what did you do over there? And what was that like?’ ”

Though he was called back for subsequent interviews, Gallucci said the experience left a “sour taste in my mouth.” Now the deputy legislative director for the Veterans of Foreign Wars organization, Gallucci suspects the interviewer for that other job may have been more curious about his mental health than his experiences in Iraq.

Research shows he may be right: Some employers are wary of hiring veterans because of potential mental health issues.

“There’s a whole host of questions you can’t legally ask, but I must say that somehow in interviews it comes out,” says Jim Pabis, a Colonel in the New York Army National Guard and Iraq combat vet who runs an executive search firm in Saratoga Springs, NY.

Nearly half of employers -- 46 percent -- said PTSD or other mental health issues were challenges in hiring employees with military experience, according to a 2010 Society of Human Resource Managers survey. And a 2011 survey of 831 hiring managers by the Apollo Research Institute found that 61 percent were "less favorable" toward hiring military personnel when considering war-related psychological disorders.
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Looks like the government has done a lousy job of getting the truth out about PTSD. Over 2 million Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans and a tiny portion of them end up in the news in a bad way. The vast majority of them can't find work because of a few bad reports?

Here's a link to a story on this blog going back to 2010

Are veterans being discriminated over PTSD or just because they are veterans?

For job-seeking vets, location matters

For job-seeking vets, location matters
By PAUL DAVIDSON
USA Today
Published: November 11, 2011

Many recent military veterans are struggling to find jobs in a tough economy, but some parts of the country may be better job-hunting grounds for former soldiers seeking civilian careers, according to a new study.

Oklahoma City is the best place for military retirees to find work, according to a ranking of 379 metro areas by Military.com and USAA, a financial service provider to military personnel.

Norfolk, Va., is ranked second, followed by Richmond, Va.; Austin and San Antonio; Madison, Wis.; Philadelphia; Raleigh, N.C.; Omaha; and Manchester, N.H.
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Senator DeMint calls Veterans Jobs Bill, "pandering"

All Americans deserve the same opportunity? Is he serious?

Veteran's Day: Jim DeMint Is The One Percent Who Voted Against Veterans
by DAVID BADASH on NOVEMBER 11, 2011

“We’re pandering to different political groups with programs that have proven to be ineffective,” DeMint said on the Senate floor, the Beaufort Gazette reported. “All Americans deserve the same opportunity to get hired. I cannot support this tax credit because I do not believe the government should privilege one American over another when it comes to work.”
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Long-term unemployment worsens for vets

Report: Long-term unemployment worsens for vets
By Rick Maze - Staff writer
Posted : Thursday Nov 3, 2011 13:26:06 EDT
For veterans of all ages, long-term unemployment has become a serious problem, according to a new Labor Department report.

For Iraq- and Afghanistan-era veterans, whose unemployment rate averaged 11.5 percent last year, 36 percent were unemployed for 27 weeks or longer, according to the Nov. 3 report.

Veterans of other eras were less likely to be unemployed, but those who lost their jobs faced a much longer search. For veterans 65 and older trying to re-enter the workforce after losing a job, 53 percent were unemployed for 27 weeks or longer. The median duration of unemployment for these older veterans was 31 weeks, the report said.

RELATED READING:

Jobs bill by Veterans Day looks unlikely (Nov. 2)

Long-term unemployment is also slightly worse for veterans than nonveterans, the report said, with veterans having a median duration of 24 weeks of unemployment, one more than for nonveterans.
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Rep. Jeff Miller's House Veterans Employment Bill Passes

House easily passes veterans employment bill
By Rick Maze - Staff writer
Posted : Wednesday Oct 12, 2011 21:26:34 EDT
The House of Representatives on Wednesday night overwhelmingly passed a veterans’ employment bill that hopes to put 400,000 or more veterans to work in the next two years.

If that happens, the jobless rate for veterans would drop from about 8.1 percent — a rate 1 percentage point less than the national unemployment rate — to 5 percent or lower.

Called the Veterans Opportunity to Work Act, or VOW Act, the bill would not create jobs. Instead, it would:

• Tweak programs helping current service members prepared for post-service life.

• Create a job retraining program for up to 100,000 veterans between the ages of 35 and 60 who have been unemployed for 26 weeks or longer.

• Attempts to get states to relax or modify licensing and credentialing rules so that people who learned a marketable skill in the military can get jobs in the private sector without extensive retraining.

Medics and truck drivers are examples of skills learned by people in the military that do not automatically lead to civilian employment, because of licensing rules vary by state and jurisdiction.

Rep. Jeff Miller, R-Fla., the House Veterans Affairs Committee chairman and chief sponsor of bill HR 2433, said the idea is to make veterans — especially those who have been unemployed for long periods and have exhausted GI Bill education benefits — better able to qualify for available jobs.
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One million veterans are now unemployed

Private sector might have to do more to ease unemployment among military veterans
By ROB HOTAKAINEN
McClatchy Newspapers
Published: October 9, 2011

WASHINGTON - Democrats and Republicans rarely agree on anything in the nation's capital, but there's a growing bipartisan sense on Capitol Hill that the private sector will have to do much more to help Congress ease chronically high unemployment among veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.

In August, President Barack Obama called on the nation's businesses to hire or train 100,000 unemployed veterans by the end of 2013, a challenge that Microsoft answered with a pledge to train 10,000 of them.

Now, as part of his $447 billion jobs package, Obama wants Congress to approve a plan that would provide businesses a tax credit of $2,400 to $9,600 for each veteran they hire, depending on whether they're disabled and how long they've been unemployed.

One million veterans already are unemployed and more than a million are expected to leave the military by 2016. Julius Clemente, a 33-year-old Iraq veteran from Kirkland, Wash., told a congressional panel Thursday that there will be "systematic chaos" if more of them can't find jobs or get help going to college.
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Congress debt fights hold up Hiring Heroes Act of 2011

Veterans employment legislation faces delays
By Rick Maze - Staff writer
Posted : Tuesday Oct 4, 2011 16:55:03 EDT
Congress is finding it hard to pass jobs-creating legislation for veterans by Veterans’ Day.

There is bipartisan support for a veterans employment package — with details to be determined — but passage has not been a top priority in Congress, making it difficult for a compromise to be signed into law by Nov. 11, the nominal deadline set by supporters of the legislation.

Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, which has increasingly complained that the Obama administration and Congress are not doing enough to help unemployed veterans, announced in March that it viewed Nov. 11 as a deadline for the government to reduce the number of jobless veterans.

Lawmakers interpreted this as a deadline for passage of legislation that would reduce the jobless rate in the future, not by Veterans Day — and even that deadline may not be met.

The Democratic-controlled Senate has been sitting since July 18 on the Hiring Heroes Act of 2011, a comprehensive package of employment and training provisions passed by the Senate Veterans’ Committee on July 7. The bill, S 951, was set aside during fights involving the debt ceiling and deficit reduction, overhaul of patent laws and an effort to prevent shutdown of the entire federal government at the start of the fiscal year.
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Camp Lejeune holds career fair and education expo

Camp Lejeune holds career fair and education expo
By: Ashley White

CAMP LEJEUNE – More than 100 companies are coming together to help employ our nation's heroes. The Job Fair and Education Expo on board Camp Lejeune is providing the resources to help get the military men and women, who are ready to leave the service, a new job or on the path for education.
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Helping Veterans In Central PA Find A Job

Helping Veterans In Central PA Find A Job
The Lancaster Vets Center Holds Job Fair
Nava Ghalili
Multi-media Journalist
5:29 p.m. EDT, September 20, 2011

EAST LAMPETER TOWNSHIP, LANCASTER COUNTY— Many veterans deal with a lot more than Post-traumatic Stress Disorder when they return home, so many are without jobs.

"I did not have a job waiting for me, actually I was on unemployment for a while," said Army and National Guard veteran, Michael Perez.

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Resource officers from a number of vet supporting agencies brought their employment tips to a job fair in Lancaster County Tuesday.

The job fair at Lancaster Vets Center in East Lampeter Township welcomed veterans for the first time since their doors opened this year.
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Outreach boosts hiring of Texas vets

Outreach boosts hiring of Texas vets
By WILLIAM PACK, Staff Writer
Published 03:40 p.m., Saturday, September 3, 2011

A comprehensive jobs outreach effort led by the Texas Veterans Commission has helped Texas place more veterans in jobs than any other state, officials said.

The commission has had responsibility for veteran job searches for just four years but in that time has helped veterans prepare themselves for the labor force and sent recruiters out to workplaces looking for jobs that create the best fit for both sides.

"We try to match employees with the skills employers need," said Stan Kurtz, the commission's operations specialist in the employment sector. "No other state is focusing on employment outreach like we do in Texas."

U.S. Department of Labor statistics released by the commission show those efforts have succeeded.

For the 12 months ended June 30, 2010, the most recent data available, 38,714 veterans in Texas found jobs after seeking the commission's assistance. That's about 18,000 more jobs than veterans filled in the second-most-successful state, North Carolina.

Part of Texas' success is due to the size of its veteran population. The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs reports that Texas is home to nearly 1.7 million veterans, second only to California, with 2 million, and just ahead of Florida.
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70,000 federal job seekers' applications were lost

Federal job seekers' applications lost when hiring system goes down
By STEPHEN LOSEY | Last Updated:August 16, 2011

About 70,000 federal job seekers' applications were lost when the government's major online hiring system went down for several days last week.

The Office of Personnel Management's USA Staffing system — which posts vacancy announcements on USAJobs.gov and accepts, rates and ranks job applications — was unexpectedly taken down Aug. 9, according to an Aug. 12 listserv notice from the Health and Human Services Department. OPM brought it back online two days later, but had to revert to a backup version stored on Aug. 7, HHS said. This meant that job applications submitted between late afternoon Aug. 7 to midday Aug. 9 were lost.
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The Air Force is cutting jobs,,,,

AF is offering buyouts and early outs, freezing hiring
An uncertain budget outlook is driving the Air Force to cut about 4,000 civilian positions shortly after the new fiscal year starts Oct. 1. Another 2,000 summer hires will go off the books Sept. 30.
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The Army is cutting jobs

The Army plans to cut 8,741 civilian jobs by October 2012.

Army Secretary John McHugh on July 11 ordered leaders throughout the Army to immediately start cutting their staffing to help meet former Defense Secretary Robert Gates' mandated efficiency initiatives. The Army is losing $834 million in operations and maintenance funding as part of those cuts.
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But it is all about to get a lot worse.


GOP plan would slash 200,000 to 300,000 federal jobs

Veterans, their advocates tell Murray they need jobs, housing

When President Obama offered up a plan to put veterans back to work by giving incentives to companies to hire them, it was a good start but not the final answer.

Where has common sense in this country gone? We keep hearing some folks in congress screaming about protecting the "job creators" when they demand the tax discounts for the wealthy be continued but we haven't seen jobs created here. They are created overseas. Congress had made it easier for these companies to just hang onto their money instead of spend it, invest it and hire more workers. Why not tie these tax discounts to jobs right here? If they hire workers right here, then they can keep their discounts. If they hire workers in other countries, they lose them. Wouldn't that be the right thing to do if the folks in congress are really serious about what they claim? All they have done is whine about needing to cut this program and that program but they have not heard the cries of the American people out of work and unable to pay their bills. Put Americans back to work and then you'll see better days in this country for everyone including the veterans who put their lives on the line and need to get out of the unemployment line.

Veterans, their advocates tell Murray they need jobs, housing
Debt panelists take role seriously, senator says
By Kathie Durbin
Columbian Staff Reporter
Originally published August 16, 2011

U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, in Vancouver Tuesday for a “listening session” with veterans and their advocates, said she’ll do her best to protect veterans’ benefits as she steps into a high-profile role as co-chair of the new deficit-reduction supercommittee. The 12-member panel is assigned the task of finding another $1.5 trillion in federal budget cuts by Thanksgiving.

But in response to pundits who say her spending decisions could be influenced by major defense industry campaign donors, Murray said no one should prejudge any of the committee members — three Democrats and three Republicans each from the Senate and House. By law, the committee must begin its work by mid-September.

“I have reached out individually to each member of the committee,” Washington’s senior senator told The Columbian. “I’ve been impressed that they consider this a serious responsibility.” Not only is the nation’s fiscal health at stake, she said, but committee members understand that they must “show that a democracy can work.”

“The pundits and journalists should not pigeonhole any one of us,” she said. “That will allow us to move forward.”

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Obama uses tax cuts to put veterans back to work

Obama unveils major jobs initiative for vets
By Rick Maze - Staff writer
Posted : Friday Aug 5, 2011 5:31:42 EDT
Facing another dismal report about high unemployment for veterans, President Obama is proposing new tax breaks to encourage employers to give a hiring edge to veterans.

The initiatives come as the Labor Department reported Friday that the unemployment rate for Iraq and Afghanistan-era veterans was 12.4 percent in July, up from 11.8 percent in July 2010.

Unemployment problems for these veterans, separated from the service since 2001, come despite the fact that the overall unemployment rate for all veterans is 8.6 percent — slightly lower than the 9.1 percent national unemployment rate.

The White House proposals, similar to other initiatives discussed in Congress in recent years, would provide businesses a $2,400 tax credit for hiring any unemployed veteran, a $4,800 tax credit for hiring a veteran who has been out of work for at least six months and a $9,600 tax credit for hiring a veteran with a service-connected disability who has been out of work for six months.
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Obama unveils major jobs initiative for vets

Unemployed veterans hit 1 million and House Bill will make veterans pay

It sounds like a great thing to do. Taking care of veterans and making sure they have jobs sounds like an honorable thing to do, but we always need to read the fine print. When you read what Congressman Filner had to say about this "fix" you'll understand the fix yet again comes with a price that other veterans will have to pay for. What happened to doing the right thing? Some folks in congress would rather protect the rich than take care of the people we owe the greatest debt to, our veterans after they protected the whole country with their lives.

Veteran Unemployment Hits 1 Million
BY BOB BREWIN 07/15/11 04:47 pm ET
More than 60,000 veterans hit the unemployment rolls in June, which puts the total number of unemployed veterans at more than 1 million, according to Rep. Jeff Miller, R-Fla., chairman of the House Veterans' Affairs Committee.

Miller, in a hearing Friday, pitched the 2011 Veteran Opportunity to Work Act backed with $3 billion budget as one solution to this problem. This bill emphasizes education and training, and includes language that mandates active duty personnel attend Transition Assistance Program classes that teach civilian job market skills such as resume writing.

Rep. Bob Filner, D-Calif, the ranking member on the committee, sharply criticized the Miller bill, arguing: "This bill does very little to create jobs for veterans, regardless of how my Republican colleagues may portray it. This bill is about completely contracting out the Transition Assistance Program." Filner also blasted the Miller bill funding formula as a tax on vets who have Veterans Administration-backed mortgages, by using high loan fees to pay for the jobs bill.
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Veteran Unemployment Hits 1 Million

Royals Push Vet Jobs at LA Event

Royals Push Vet Jobs at LA Event
July 11, 2011
Military.com|by Amy Bushatz and Glenn Anderson

LOS ANGELES -- About 2,000 veterans and military spouses attended a job fair here yesterday aimed at connecting them with military-friendly employers while raising awareness across the civilian workforce about the value of hiring vets.

“Veterans and military spouses have the kinds of skills that employers covet,” said Ross Cohen, director of the organization ServiceNation: Mission Serve, which helped organize the job fair.

“They are dependable, they have incredible management experience – and the issue is just translating those skills to the civilian workforce.”

About 150 employers hosted booths at the Hiring Our Heroes job fair, which was held at Sony Studio’s Stage 15 in Culver City, Calif. – the same stage where the Wizard of Oz was filmed. Employers who attended the job fair included Sony, Bank of America, Aflac, Wal-Mart and Waste Management.
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Royals Push Vet Jobs at LA Event

NY Senator Gillibrand pushes bill to get veterans jobs

US senator from NY pushes to help unemployed vets

Associated Press

NEW YORK — Thousands of military veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan are living in New York City with no jobs — when they could be paid for skills learned in the military or be retrained, a U.S. senator said Sunday.

"Too many of our troops who risked their lives protecting our country are returning home to an alarming rate of joblessness," Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand told a news conference at her Manhattan office.

Nationwide, the New York Democrat said more than 20 percent of veterans ages 18-to-24 were unemployed in 2010.

As a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Gillibrand is sponsoring the Hiring Heroes Act of 2011. The legislation would help veterans through training, personal employment assessments and workshops on how to write resumes and conduct interviews.

The senator was joined by a group of the city's veterans; Paul Rieckhoff, executive director of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, the largest new veterans group headquartered in New York City; and Wesley Poriotis, founder of Veterans Across America, a nonprofit dedicated to helping veterans find jobs.
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US senator from NY pushes to help unemployed vets

Veterans good enough for Wall Street, why not your company?

They know what it is like to work well as a team. They had to because it kept them alive. They know what it is like to finish the job no matter how tired they are. They did it without sleep for most of the year they were deployed. They spent it working everyday and didn't even think about calling in sick. Devoted? You bet. Focused on the task? Yep, that too. So while some companies won't consider hiring a veteran, Wall Street is.

Wall Street recruits war veterans as financial jobs decline

By William McQuillen, Published: June 24
Updated: Sunday, June 26, 8:58 PM

June 24 (Bloomberg) — Veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are being recruited by banks such as Citigroup Inc. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. as Wall Street jobs wane.

The New York-based banks joined Credit Suisse Group AG, Bank of America Corp. and Deutsche Bank AG at a job fair hosted yesterday by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce for service personnel aboard the USS Intrepid, a museum in the Hudson River.

“We’re looking for the right talent at the right time,” Suni Harford, Citigroup’s head of markets for North America, said while gripping a stack of resumes collected at the fair.

The veterans are aiming to work in an industry where jobs fell in 2010 for a fourth straight year to an average 7.63 million, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, or 8.4 percent below a 2006 peak. For veterans, unemployment rose to 12.1 percent in May from 10.6 percent a year ago. President Barack Obama said on June 22 he will withdraw 33,000 troops from Afghanistan by September 2012.
Wall Street recruits war veterans as financial jobs decline

After fighting for his country, Iraq vet fights for a job

After fighting for his country, Iraq vet fights for a job

BY ROB HOTAKAINEN
MCCLATCHY WASHINGTON BUREAU

WASHINGTON -- Eric Smith calls himself one of the lucky ones, returning home from the war in Iraq in 2008 with two arms and two legs.

U.S. Navy veteran Eric Smith considered himself lucky to return home to Baltimore, Maryland, after tours in Afghanistan and Iraq. But Smith has found finding full-time employment rough and his VA disability check too small to cover expenses, forcing him to move back in with parents while waiting for his luck to turn.
Doug Kapustin / MCT

But his luck has yet to produce a full-time job. In the past year, the 26-year-old Baltimore veteran has found part-time work as a bartender — which paid $4 an hour, plus tips — and as a mail sorter, which paid $8 an hour. And when he was desperate enough for income, he volunteered to be a test patient in a drug study, which earned him $1,200 for a four-night hospital stay.

It’s not exactly what Smith had in mind.

After getting bored with high school, he quit as a 15-year-old sophomore and enlisted in the Navy two years later, serving two deployments in Iraq. He became a senior hospital corpsman, leading a four-man team in a 20-bed intensive care unit, gaining experience that he thought would easily translate into a good-paying civilian job.

That never happened.



Read more: After fighting for his country, Iraq vet fights for a job