By Jeremy Walsh
With a historically high ratio of veterans surviving major battlefield injuries in Iraq and Afghanistan, a Queens councilman joined advocates Monday to announce that a new job initiative for them is coming to the city next spring.
“It's a national shame that veterans return home to find themselves shut out of the job market,” said Councilman Hiram Monserrate (D-East Elmhurst), a former Marine who fought in the first Gulf War.
The nonprofit Center for Military and Private Sector Initiatives will kick off the initiative in the city next April with “Six Months to Success,” an employment conference for wounded and disabled veterans, who more and more outnumber the dead, thanks to body armor and advances in medical techniques.
According to a 2006 study by the University of Pennsylvania, the ratio of combat-zone deaths to those wounded has dropped from 24 percent in Vietnam to 13 percent in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Other parts of the initiative include a mentoring program that matches an entrepreneur with a returned veteran and a digital video platform that will allow veterans to participate in the conference remotely and provides a database of disabled veterans nationwide.
Wes Poriotis, CMPSI's founder, said former soldiers are becoming a new disenfranchised group.
“Veterans seeking good jobs today face many of the same obstacles that women and people of color faced 20 or 30 years ago,” he said.
Veterans need a network of comrades and sympathetic executives they can reach out to when they leave the military and private sector advocates who will help them make connections with employers and to be part of a searchable database, Poriotis said.
The conference was inspired by a 2006 study of veterans' employment sponsored by Congress and submitted by Poriotis' group.
The study found that in 2004, there were 454,000 veterans working at federal agencies, who accounted for one fourth of all personnel. But in the private sector, only 9.4 percent of the work force were veterans, the study found.
It also determined that the group of veterans from 20 to 24 had a 15.8 percent unemployment rate when they returned from duty.
Reach reporter Jeremy Walsh by e-mail at jwalsh@timesledger.com or by phone at 718-229-0300, Ext. 154.
