For Soldiers Returning From Iraq Finding Work Can Be Difficult

By KIMBERLY HEFLINGAssociated Press Writer WASHINGTON (AP) – Nearly every day he was in Iraq, Staff Sgt. Steven Cummings heard mortar rounds so loud that even now he drops to the ground at the crackle of lightning. In Milan, Mich., Cummings’ wife took out two mortgages and the couple went $15,000 in debt during his 14 months overseas, because his salary was less than he was making as a civilian electrical controls engineer. Looking back, those almost seem like the good times. In the year since he’s been home, Cummings has been laid off from two jobs. While other reasons were given for the layoffs, Cummings thinks both were related to his duty in the Michigan National Guard and the time off it requires. Like some other veterans who have returned from Afghanistan and Iraq, he is struggling to find work. “I don’t know what I’m going to do now. I’m in the exact position I was when I came back from Iraq,” said Cummings, a father of two. “I’m 50 years old and I have a mortgage payment due. I’m tired of it.” Although many employers take pride in hiring veterans and make up any pay an employee lost while deployed, some are reluctant to hire those in the Guard and Reserves who might have to deploy again for months at a time, said Bill Gaul, chief officer at Destiny Group, an online group that seeks to match employers and veterans. Almost 490,000 troops from the Guard and reserve have mobilized since Sept. 11, 2001, overseas or for duty in-country. Of those, about 320,000 have completed their mobilization. The number of now-unemployed Guard members and reservists who served in Iraq is unclear because the Labor Department will not begin gathering data specifically on post-Sept. 11 veterans until August. The unemployment rate for veterans of all wars was 4.6 percent last year, the department said, compared to an overall unemployment rate of 5.5 percent. Rep. Allyson Schwartz, D-Pa., and Rep. Joe Schwarz, R-Mich., say they have heard enough anecdotal stories to be concerned. The two are co-sponsoring a bill that would give companies up to $2,400 in tax credits for each veteran from the Afghanistan and Iraq wars that they hire. “This is a way to give respect to our servicemen and women who have served,” Schwartz said. For a small company it could be “mini-windfall,” Schwarz said. “It will make a difference.” There are laws designed to protect the civilian jobs of deployed Guard and reserve troops, but some still come home unemployed if their companies skirt the law or take away jobs for other reasons, such as the closure of a business. Others are looking for work because they were unemployed when they left or are coming off active military duty and entering the civilian job market for the first time. Some are changed by war, and find the civilian jobs they had before are no longer as meaningful. That was the case with Cpl. Vicki Angell, 32, who was assigned to the 324th Military Police Battalion out of Chambersburg, Pa. She gave up her job as a customer service supervisor at an equipment company to serve in Iraq, and it took her a year to find a job she was happy with as an editor at The Sheridan Press in Hanover, Pa. “You send out a lot of resumes. You try to do everything you can do, but it’s really hard to account for the time you are in Iraq, and really to try to make that, the things you were doing in Iraq relevant to what an employer is looking for today,” Angell said. Sgt. Benjamin Lewis, 36, a civilian chef who worked at a restaurant in Ann Arbor, Mich., that burned down while he was deployed in Iraq with the Michigan National Guard, said some employers directly told him they could not hire him because he could be deployed again and needed weekends and time off in the summer for drilling. Others, he said, asked if he struggled mentally because of his time at war. He got so desperate he considered returning to Iraq with a new unit. Lewis, whose stepson was killed in Iraq, said fortunately he’s been able to find a restaurant that is flexible and supportive of his military service. “I was pretty frantic in the end,” Lewis said. “It was almost a year without a job.” Cummings, a member of the 156th Signal Battalion who did telecommunications work in the Iraqi cities of Baghdad and Mosul, said he is surprised to find himself in this predicament. Cummings said he thought he was returning to Gentile Packaging Machinery Co., where he worked for 11 years in Bridgewater, Mich., but he was told he was laid off the first day he was back to work, he said. Anthony Gentile, director of marketing for Xela Pack Inc., a sister company of Gentile Packaging Machinery in Saline, Mich., said the company had just four workers and three were laid off after production slowed down after Sept. 11, 2001. If Cummings hadn’t been in Iraq, he would have been laid off sooner, Gentile said. “He was notified when he was back because the whole time he was gone we were hoping we’d have work for him,” Gentile said. Cummings said he considered suing the owner, but freshly home from war, it just seemed overwhelming to do so because he felt “devastated, betrayed, worthless.” “Everybody told me to go after the guy. I thought, you know what, if he’s going to go after me, I don’t want to work for him,” Cummings said. A few months later through a veterans program he was able to get work at Superior Controls Inc., in Plymouth, Mich. But, he said he was laid off from that job on May 20. He said he was told the company was downsizing, but he believes it was because he complained about a company policy that said it could not promise to hire returning veterans from war. Two phones messages at Superior Controls by The Associated Press were not returned. Allison Schwartz, the daughter of a Korean War veteran, and Joe Schwarz, a Vietnam War veteran, said they are not sure exactly how much money the bill they dubbed the Veterans Employment and Respect Act would cost. Besides veterans, the tax credit under the bill would also be extended to companies that hire dependents of soldiers who died in combat and the spouses of those in the Guard and Reserves who deployed longer than six months. Cummings, Lewis and Angell said it’s a first step for helping those veterans who need work by providing an incentive to companies to hire them. “I think it’s definitely a good idea. Even though it’s probably an unspoken thing, it’s hard for an employer to hire someone in this climate because chances are they’re going to deploy again,” Angell said.