VETS provides resources and services to help veterans locate grants, training and employment opportunities, and to assure their right to return to a job after completion of military service.
A variety of broad U.S. employment-related measures for veterans have been instituted since 1940, when the Selective Training and Service Act was authorized, guaranteeing re-employment rights to everyone who left a position to join the Armed Forces, the most well-known being the G.I. Bill of Rights. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed it in 1944, and it has contributed more than any other program in history to the welfare of veterans, training, to some degree, 7.8 million individuals. Over the years many additional acts and bills have also been passed regarding veterans and training and employment, built around whichever war U.S. service people were engaged in at the time. In 1974, VETS was established, under the Employment Training Administration (ETA) umbrella, as an office to focus specifically on education and training for veterans, and ten years later it became an independent agency, with its own Assistant Secretary. Since then, it has been one of several government units, including the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Small Business Bureau, addressing and executing improvement of employment, training and other work-force issues and scenarios for veterans.
VETS works to secure the greatest number of employment opportunities possible for veterans, which it realizes through a variety of avenues and financial plans and policies, for veterans and those who hire them, including:
- e-VETS Resource Advisor, an interactive webpage that contains job search tools and tips, employment openings, and information on rights and benefits, along with many other options to research for personalized results.
- Homeless Veterans Reintegration Program, which provides employment assistance that specializes in outreach, supportive services, and training for homeless veterans, to guide them in making their way back into the workforce, and also provides funding for operators of the services.
- Veterans’ Workforce Investment Program, which provides competitive grants geared toward focused training, re-training and employment opportunities for veterans, to meet the needs of employers for qualified workers in high demand industries.
- The Recovery and Employment Assistance Lifelines (REALifelines) initiative, a joint project of the U.S. Department of Labor, the Bethesda Naval Medical Center, and the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, which provides personalized assistance to severely injured service members who cannot return to active duty, helping get them the proper counseling and training so they can effectively launch new careers in the private sector.
- USERRA (Uniformed Services Employment and Re-Employment Rights Act of 1994), which sees to it that veterans and members of the National Guard and Reserve Forces can serve on active duty without harm later to their employment or benefits status.
- Federal Veterans Preference Enforcement, which works to ensure veterans entitled preference over others for virtually all federal jobs.
- Vets Guide to Competitive and Discretionary Grants (PDF), which explains what grants are available, who’s eligible, and how to apply.
- Jobs for Veterans State Grants, which provides funds to support Disabled Veterans’ Outreach Program specialists; Local Veteran’s Employment Representative Staff; Transition Assistance Program Employment Workshops; and emergency situations as they arise.
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Founded: 1974
Annual Budget: $228 million
Employees: 250
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Veterans’ Employment and Training Service (VETS)
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Ciccolella, Charles "Chick"
Previous Assistant Secretary
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Charles S. (Chick) Ciccolella, who graduated from Alabama’s Auburn University and the National War College, also received a Master’s in Business Management and Supervision from Central Michigan University. From 1968 to 1996, he was in the U.S. Army, including a stint as an Infantry Lieutenant with the 101st Airborne in Vietnam, from 1969 to 1970. In addition, he held many other troop command and staff positions during his 28-year military career, in the U.S., Germany and Panama, including being an Infantry Colonel and Senior Military Advisor for the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency at the Department of State. Later Ciccolella, a member of American Legion Post 68, in Washington D.C., was an Assistant Director on the national staff of the American Legion. He served four years in the U.S. Senate, first as the Chief of Operations for the Senate Sergeant At Arms, and later as the Director of Information Technology Policy for the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration. He was also the Deputy Capitol Coordinator for the Joint Congressional Inaugural Committee, and helped plan the 2001 Inaugural Ceremony.
In 2001 Ciccolella became the Deputy Assistant Secretary of VETS, and four years later he was nominated by President George W. Bush to be Assistant Secretary. He served until the end of Bush's presidency, after which he became a senior fellow for economic empowerment for the WOunded Warrior Project.
In 2002 and 2004 Ciccolella contributed to the Republican National Committee, and in 2004 he gave as well to the George Bush for President Campaign. Ciccolella’s wife and daughter also both work in the government, his wife for the Drug Enforcement Agency and his daughter as a contracting manager with the General Services Administration.
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President Obama has nominated an injured veteran to head the Department of Labor’s Veterans’ Employment and Training Service (VETS), which provides resources and services to help veterans locate grants, training and employment opportunities, and to assure their right to return to a job after completion of military service. Born circa 1970 and raised in Guilderland, New York, Raymond M. Jefferson has considered Honolulu, Hawaii, his home since 1995. Jefferson graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1988 with a major in leadership. He served as an Army Officer with leadership positions in the Presidential Honor Guard, Army Rangers and Special Forces. In 1995, while attempting to protect his teammates from the premature detonation of a hand grenade during Special Forces training, he lost all five fingers on his left hand. After recuperating in Honolulu, Jefferson attended Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, earning an MPA in Strategic Management in 1998. He then earned an MBA in 2000 from Harvard Business School. Upon graduation, he was selected as a White House Fellow and worked as a Special Assistant to the Secretary of Commerce in 2000 and 2001. In 2001 and 2002, Jefferson used a Fulbright Fellowship to study in Singapore, where he focused on how public sector leadership is exercised in that city-state’s multicultural environment.
Jefferson began his career in government in 2003, when he was named as the Deputy Director for the State of Hawaii’s Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism (DBEDT). He was the first person of African-American descent to serve in a cabinet-level appointed position in Hawaii. Serving at DBEDT through 2004, Jefferson co-led a major reorganization for the department, which had more than 230 employees and an operating budget of $182 million. In 2004, Jefferson left public service for private sector work as a leadership consultant, culminating in his work for McKinsey & Company in Singapore, from 2006 to 2008, where he created and delivered leadership training and development programs for clients and offices throughout Asia. His focus areas were organizational change, inspirational leadership, top team development and peak performance. He is a member of the Asia Society, the Fulbright Association, the NAACP and the Special Forces Association.
Jefferson is conversant in Mandarin, French and Arabic. A Democrat, Jefferson donated $2,500 to Democratic causes in 2004 and 2008, including $250 to Democratic National Committee in 2004 and $2,250 to Barack Obama in 2008.
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