• Release Date:
• Tuesday, April 20, 2010
• Dateline (city):
• Arlington, VA
• Contact:
• Natalie Bailey
  Medill News Service
  Navy Times
  www.navytimes.com

As officials watch cash-strapped employers stop using the Montgomery GI Bill On-the-Job Training Program for veterans, it makes sense to lift the requirement that veterans in the program receive several pay increases, said Chad Shatz, vice president of the National Association of State Approving Agencies.

“We’re looking to help people in the private sector who have suffered from the hurting economy” and want to use the program, Shatz said, describing the proposed change as temporary. “Hopefully the economy will turn around in three to five years.”

Shatz’s organization coordinates the state approving agencies that oversee GI Bill programs. He is also director of the Missouri State Approving Agency.

As the Veterans Affairs Department program works now, employers agree to pay veterans the same as equally qualified employees while they train in their position. Employers also agree to raise the veteran’s wages every six months for up to two years. Veterans in the program then also collect a VA stipend, which decreases every six months as the veteran gets raises from the employer. So as time on the job increases, the employer raises the salary while the VA payments decrease, leaving the veteran with a stable monthly income.

A new bill would take away the required wage increases, leaving the veteran without a guarantee of a pay raise every six months. Authored by Rep. Tom Perriello, D-Va., and currently stalled in House over budget concerns, the bill reflects a similar but permanent policy already in place for veteran job training in the public sector, Shatz said.

Some veterans groups oppose the bill because it would result in lower wages for those who participate.

“If wages remain stagnant throughout a veteran’s training program, they will receive progressively less money every six months due to the drop in GI Bill rates. This is unacceptable,” Tim Embree of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America said in his prepared statement for a February hearing on the bill.

But Shatz argues that these days, many employers don’t have the resources or willingness to agree to the pay increases — meaning veterans also are losing the stipends, since their employer no longer qualifies for the program under VA’s rules.

Former Navy Petty Officer 2nd Class Billy Fitzsimmons started the OJT program in 2008 and, six months later, moved from one training job to another — not knowing that he couldn’t stay in the program because his new employer was under a pay freeze. Though the new job paid more money than his old one, the employer could not agree to the obligatory raises, so Fitzsimmons couldn’t get his VA stipend.

Now he’s at a new job that can provide the raises, and he’s back in the program, training for management at Big O Tires in Rolla, Mo. Though operating under the requirement of the traditional pay scale increase, Fitzsimmons’ boss, Dave Watkins, said he would qualify for a raise just like any other employee who becomes more skilled and valuable in the workplace.

“There’s no necessary advantage in this program as far as the employer is concerned, beyond having a phenomenal employee,” Watkins said. “But the true advantage of what we’re doing here is worth its weight in gold.”

Other veterans in the program haven’t been as lucky. Former Marine Cpl. Nick Spainhour has held a unionized job at a cable-making factory in Chillicothe, Mo. for three years. In his one year of qualified on-the-job training, he made about $13.45 an hour plus about $1,000 a month in VA benefits. After six months, he estimated the benefit amount was down to $900 a month. Then, at the beginning of the year, the benefits were cut to nothing when the employer was no longer authorized for the program; because of the bad economy, the union was not giving raises.

“This is the first time in my life that I’ve had to ask family for money,” Spainhour said.

“I’m responsible for guys like Billy Fitzsimmons and Nick Spainhour,” Shatz said. “They’re hurting when all of a sudden they don’t get benefits because they don’t get a wage increase. If we can’t approve these programs, then they’ll get nothing.”

IAVA would agree to a temporary lifting of the pay raise requirement only if program benefits are not decreased after six months. However, that compromise would add to what may already be crippling budgetary concerns in the House.

The new allowances are expected to increase the number of participating employers, costing VA more money in additional stipends. The Congressional Budget Office estimated in March that an additional 260 veterans will receive $7,000 in benefits annually from 2011 to 2015, adding up to an extra $9 million over the next decade.

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