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Testimony
of VIETNAM VETERANS OF AMERICA By Calvin
Gross Chairman,
National Employment, Training, and Business Opportunities Committee Accompanied
by Richard
F. Weidman Director,
Government Relations Before
the House
Committee on Veterans’ Affairs Subcommittee
on Benefits Regarding
The
Veterans’ Employment and Training Service October
30, 2001 Chairman
Simpson, Ranking Member Reyes,
and other distinguished members of the subcommittee,
Vietnam Veterans of America (VVA) is pleased to have this opportunity
to provide our views regarding the status of the Department of
Labor’s Veterans’ Employment and Training Service (VETS). As
you may know, Mr. Chairman, VVA has long had serious reservations and
deep concern about the generally not very effective national effort to
assist veterans, especially disabled veterans and veterans at high
risk to obtain and sustain meaningful employment. Ever year since VVA
was founded in 1978, VVA has brought serious concerns to the Congress
when it became clear that the Department of Labor (DoL) would not
meaningfully address these concerns. There was a time when we thought
that the problem was one of poor leadership at the Department of
Labor, a flaccid bureaucracy, a lack of adequate resources, and
perhaps the arrogant and anti-veteran corporate culture at the
Employment and Training Administration of the US Department of Labor
and their state partners. VVA
has come to the conclusion that while all of the above was (and
largely still is) true, the real problem was structure and philosophy. The
VVA National Convention in 1997 scrapped all of the many resolutions
that we put on the books to try and provide remedy to the myriad
problems of this so-called employment system, and particularly the
veteran’s portion of these services.
One thing was abundantly clear: the average veteran,
particularly disabled veterans and others most in need of assistance,
simply were not receiving meaningful help in the most populous parts
of our Nation. Like our distinguished colleagues at the other
veterans’ organizations, we had been trying to add proscriptive
solutions to real problems by seeking additional black letter law. We were wrong to think that these solutions could ever work. The
people who run what used to be called the Job Service and now the Work
Force Development Agencies, take money very, very seriously.
It is virtually the only thing that gets and holds their
attention. What is wrong with the current structure is that there is
no reward for excellent performance, nor any sanctions for terrible
performance and behavior. There is no way to get, much less hold the
attention of management at every level in these agencies. Therefore,
VVA has called for major changes in veterans’ employment and
training system since that time, and strengthened that call in 1997,
calling for meaningful standards, better monitoring and analysis, and
for private sector principles to be applied to any entity that
purports to meet the employment needs of veterans, particularly
disabled veterans and other veterans in greatest need. The
United States is a democratic republic. The United States is also a
mercantile country, relying on a variation of market forces (i.e.,
cash) driven forces to make our economy work well, Our economy
generally does work well. Applying a variation of the free market
system and our democracy is why veterans served and fought.
A carefully structured new system can make this system work. In
its September 2001 report on the status of VETS (GAO–01-928), the
General Accounting Office (GAO) raised a number of concerns about the
effectiveness of the VETS program in relation to the Workforce
Investment Act of 1998 (WIA). A core concept behind WIA was the
centralization of workforce-related services in “one-stop”
centers. VETS participates in these centers through its Disabled
Veterans’ Outreach Program (DVOP) and Local Veterans’ Employment
Representative (LVER) programs. When
it examined the effectiveness of these centers and their utilization
of DVOP & LVER services, GAO found that VETS was not collecting
the data necessary to determine how effective these services were,
particularly subsequent job retention and wages earned by program
participants. At present, the only outcome data VETS collects is on
the percentage of veterans served who gain employment. However,
because each state uses different methods for verifying and measuring
employment rates, the data submitted to VETS by the states represents
a variable patchwork of dissimilar data, making any type of meaningful
outcome measurement impossible. VVA does not understand why VETS has
failed to negotiate effective agreements with state workforce agencies
to develop a common standard for measuring outcomes in this area. This
failure by DOL/VETS management has clearly compromised program
effectiveness and is, bluntly stated, inexcusable. VVA has been urging
a strengthening and simplification of this data gathering for some
time, focusing on job placement. (The problem with “obtained
employment”, and checking wage records is that the Work Force
Development Agency (WFDA) may not have provided any real help to the
veteran at all in his or her job search.) Also
inexcusable is the failure of VETS’ management to provide proper
oversight of DVOP and LVER grants. We concur with GAO’s assessment
that after so many years in existence, VETS still does not have
effective performance management systems for monitoring compliance
with program objectives. Part of the difficulty is that there are so
few tools that the VETS staff has in the field. VETS can declare a
state out of compliance and seize the grant funds, or move to
recapture funds when the WFDA is caught red handed blatantly breaking
the law. Otherwise their
only tools are encouragement and moral suasion, or strong letters and
potential political embarrassment of the agency. This is the fault not
of the agency, but of the top political and permanent leadership of
the United States Department of Labor, who have never strongly
supported VETS pushing for performance in the field. It is also the
fault of the Congress for not changing Federal law, to give the VETS
staff in the field more control over rewards and sanctions. In other
words, there must be real money tools for them to be effective. Beyond
the management oversight problems outlined above, GAO claims that the
VETS program suffers from a “lack of flexibility” driven largely
by its original authorizing legislation. As GAO
noted in its report, existing law does not provide DVOP and
LVER programs with the flexibility they need to move staff around
within a state to match changing employment and residency patterns.
The original law authorizing VETS was written under “Old Economy”
conditions. Congress must modernize the VETS statute to bring the
program into line with the “New Economy” and rapidly evolving job
market. Mr.
Chairman, all of the preceding paragraph and “finding” is just
plain eyewash. When the states’ WFDAs ask for “flexibility” what
they really mean is license for doing whatever they want with the
money. There is virtually no proven record of performance on the part
of most states that would lead any reasonable person to say yes when
they say “Trust us.”
The assumption of the GAO that the “new” one stop centers
created by the Workforce Investment Act (WIA) are working well to help
citizens find jobs is just plain wrong.
There is no reasonable basis on which to say this. It is worth
noting that the same people who wrote this report also wrote the
reports ten years ago that led to the eventual enactment of the WIA.
It is worth noting that while the GAO spent much time in person
with the state WDTA and others, but only limited phone interviews were
used to seek input of the veterans organizations.
It is also worth noting that the one stop centers say that they
are in the “information sharing” business, rather than job
placement. This stated
mission is virtually impossible to measure in terms of real and
material usefulness in the employment search. Therefore there is no
way to hold the WFDAs accountable for how well they are doing in
regard to assisting Americans to find meaningful work at a living
wage. Mr.
Chairman, there are quite a number of factual mistakes and erroneous
assumptions in this report. VVA would be pleased to detail all of
these in a report to this distinguished Committee, if you so desire.
Let it suffice to say that the GAO is correct that rewards and
sanctions are the minimum that needs to be done. GAO is wrong in their
assumption of good will and a real desire to do a great job for
veterans on the part of the WFDA officials in every state. Some are
very good, and very committed to the mission.
Many, particularly in our most populous states are not
committed or only offer lip service. Back to Witness List |