RSSIssue 8:9 – Saturday, September 1, 2007
www.vetjobs.com
The VetJobs Early Eagle is for member employers, recruiters, friends and supporters of VetJobs.
VetJobs is exclusively sponsored and partially owned by the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States (www.vfw.org). VetJobs is the only job board endorsed by the Vietnam Veterans of America (www.vva.org), the Naval Reserve Association (www.navy-reserve.org) and the Veterans of Modern Warfare (www.modernveterans.com).
This month’s Early Eagle is sponsored by: WEDDLE’s
Contents:
1. Message from the Top
2. History of Labor Day
3. New Veteran-Preference Rule to Take Effect September 7
4. Social Security Administration Creates Resource for HR
5. Web Will Top Newspapers in Advertising Dollars by 2011
6, DHS No-Match Final Rules
7. National Guard and Reserve Mobilized as of August 29, 2007
8. Significant Events this Month in Military History
Thank you for reading the VetJobs Early Eagle employer newsletter. If you like this newsletter and what VetJobs and the VFW do to assist veterans and their family member find employment, please go to www.weddles.com/recruitpol.cfm and vote VetJobs for the WEDDLE’s User’s Choice Award!
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1. Message from the Top
There has been much press coverage about the August break-in by foreign hackers to Monster and the compromising of its resume database. Monster is the contractor that runs USAJobs for OPM and TurboTAP for DOD and other government sponsored sites. According to the press, Monster had apparently been putting the resume data from the government sites into its own resume database. Thus all the candidate information that was put on government sites like USAJobs and TurboTAP is now at risk. USAJobs has posted a User’s Beware Alert on its front page warning candidates they may have been compromised. The hackers have been sending phishing emails and reportedly there are some candidates who have fallen for the scam emails due to the breach at Monster.
This is a significant wake up call for the job board industry and emphasizes the importance of maintaining secure firewall technology. One thing I learned while working in Naval Intelligence is that there are always people who are trying to break into sites, especially from the former Soviet republics and from the People’s Republic of China. There have been unsuccessful attempts against VetJobs. Due to these attempts, VetJobs regularly evaluates its firewalls and has multiple layers of protection built into our system. Fortunately, VetJobs has not been breached as was Monster. The International Association of Employment Websites (www.iaews.org), of which VetJobs was a founding member, will be covering this issue at length at its conference in San Francisco on September 17.
I want to emphasize to employers that the breach at Monster is an anomaly and most sites have taken measures to ensure the security of their databases. Monster is a reputable company. It is unfortunate that Monster was breached, but Monster has reportedly taken measures to prevent such a breach in the future. This breach does not constitute a crisis for the job board industry. Rather, it is a wake up call for those job board companies who did not have tight enough security to act.
The Global Summit for Online Recruitment (ONREC) Conference and Expo is being held on September 18/19 following the IAEWS Congress at San Francisco’s Golden Gateway Holiday Inn. This year VetJobs will again be exhibiting so please come by and visit our booth. Additionally, I will be participating in panel presentations on The Challenges Online Recruiters Face. Delegates from Japan, Ecuador, Poland, Pakistan and the UK, along with hundreds of senior human resource and recruiting professionals from throughout the United States and Canada will be attending the conference. Having participated in ONREC conferences in the past, I can highly recommend that anyone in HR or recruiting should attend this Global Summit. For more information, visit www.onrec.com/conferences/180907/.
September is when the United States celebrates Labor Day! I discuss the history of Labor Day in article #2 below. But when celebrating Labor Day this year, let us recognize not only the American labor movement and all it has brought about, but also those who labor to protect our country. In 1970, one in 10 people who worked in the United States had served in the military. Today that number is one in 250 and growing. This is the result of having an all volunteer military force for 35 years.
Think about the size of our military today compared to the recent past. In the 1960’s and 70’s, the United States had upwards of nine million people in uniform. Today, there are roughly 1.4 million on active duty and 1.3 million in the Guard and Reserve (who are now used as if they were active duty) for a total of 2.7 million. The official population of the United States in July was 300,419,000. Throw in another 20,000,000 illegal aliens (no one really knows how many illegal aliens are in the United States), and you have a population base of roughly 320,419,000 that is being defended by 2.7 million. That equates to only eight tenths of one percent (.08 %) of the population is defending the other 99.2 percent!
In 1970, there were over 50 million veterans in the United States. In 1999 when VetJobs was founded, there were 26 million veterans of which 18 million were in the work force. Today, there are barely 15 million living veterans of which 10.5 million are in the work force. Depending on the survey, upwards of 1,700 veterans now die each day! In five years the living veteran population will have dwindled to 10 million.
This data has many ramifications. We now have two generations of Americans that have no idea of what really goes on in the military and the importance of having a strong military. This lack of understanding impacts political and social attitudes towards the military. There is a shortage of qualified candidates with security clearances since most people with a clearance working in the defense industry originally obtained their clearance while in the military.
I could go on and on about the impact of the dwindling veteran demographics, but I think you get my drift in this conversation. There are fewer defenders of our freedoms living who understood the importance of maintaining a strong military. And without a strong military, we can not maintain our freedoms! So think about these things this Labor Day. The ramifications are huge in terms of the future impact on our society.
September has many military related dates. September 2 is V-J Day when Japan formally surrendered; September 11 is Patriot Day: September 18 is the birthday of the United States Air Force; September 21 is National POW/MIA Day; September 29 is VFW Day when the Veterans of Foreign Wars was established; and September 30 is Gold Star Mother’s Day.
And on September 11 we commemorate those who died from the attack on America by radical Islamic terrorists. The day will be marked throughout the United States and abroad with services of remembrance. Please observe a solemn moment of silence on the morning on September 11 as we remember not only the terror, but also the heroism of those who stood in harm’s way.
Since that fateful day in 2001, there have been many radical Islamic terrorist attacks against democracies worldwide. In spite of what some politicians may pronounce, remember that it was the United States that was attacked on September 11, we did not attack Islam. Let us not forget that the world is involved in a prolonged conflict with a non-state, radical religious group that wants to eliminate the nation state as we know it and the freedoms that have come to identify the democracies of the world. I maintain that we can not negotiate with the radical Islamic terrorists as their sole goal is our elimination and the restoration of the Caliphate. They care not for who they kill in order to reach their goal. As a result, this conflict will be with us for a long, long time. That has many ramifications for the type of military the United States needs to maintain, as other conventional threats and historical enemies of America are re-emerging. The United States and other democracies did not start the conflict with radical Islam, but we will not back away from it. Let us pray that our leaders have the will to sustain this fight to the finish and commit whatever is necessary to win!
Finally, in August I had the opportunity to attend the 108th VFW Annual Convention in Kansas City, MO. It was a real pleasure to talk with VFW members from around the world and hear of the success stories they tell of people finding jobs using VetJobs! The staff of VetJobs looks forward to continuing the tradition of assisting our veterans in finding meaningful employment!
As always, if there is anything we at VetJobs can do for you, please do not hesitate to call or email.
And remember, Freedom Is Never Free – Support Our Armed Forces and Veterans!
Best regards,
Ted Daywalt
President
/—–September Early Eagle sponsor is WEDDLE’s—–\
The WEDDLE’s Training Series provides a full curriculum of training programs that are delivered by toll-free teleconference. You get the PowerPoint slides for each program in advance. Everyone in your office can listen in or you can take the course by yourself.
All of the programs are presented by WEDDLE’s Publisher, Peter Weddle, and draw on WEDDLE’s 10+ years of research into the Best Practices for sourcing and recruiting online. The Fall/Winter 2007 series includes:
-October 2, 2007: Optimizing the Candidate Experience: The Secret to Selling Top Talent
-October 23, 2007: Staffing Metrics That Count in the Corner Office
-November 6, 2007: Googling, Blogging & Other Sourcing Techniques for Passive Prospects
-November 27, 2007: Blink Recruiting-Getting to “Yes” Fast With Passive Prospects
-December 4, 2007: Building a Corporate Career Site for Top Talent
-December 18, 2007: A-to-Z in Best Practices for Online Recruitment Advertising
These are great learning opportunities presented by one of the industry’s most highly rated speakers. In addition, you can’t beat the price; it’s hundreds, even thousands, of dollars less than comparable programs elsewhere. But, wait, there’s more: Sign up for two programs, you get a bigger discount. Sign up for four or more programs, you get our biggest discount. Registrations are limited, so reserve your seats now. To get pricing information and sign up, please call WEDDLE’s at 317-916-9424.
\—–Please visit the September Early Eagle sponsor WEDDLE’s—–/
2. History of Labor Day
As the Industrial Revolution took hold of the United States, the average American in the late 1800s worked 12-hour days, seven days a week in order to make a basic living. Children were also working, as they provided cheap labor to employers and laws against child labor were not strongly enforced.
With the long hours and terrible working conditions, American unions became more prominent and voiced their demands for a better way of life. On Tuesday September 5, 1882, 10,000 workers marched from City Hall to Union Square in New York City, holding the first-ever Labor Day parade. Participants took an unpaid day-off to honor the workers of America as well as vocalize issues they had with employers. As years passed, more states began to hold these parades, but Congress would not legalize the holiday until 12 years later.
On May 11, 1894, workers of the Pullman Palace Car Company in Chicago struck to protest wage cuts and the firing of union representatives. They sought support from their union led by Eugene V. Debs and on June 26 the American Railroad Union called a boycott of all Pullman railway cars. Within days, 50,000 rail workers complied and railroad traffic out of Chicago came to a halt. On July 4, President Grover Cleveland dispatched troops to Chicago. Much rioting and bloodshed ensued, but the government’s actions broke the strike and the boycott soon collapsed. Debs and three other union officials were jailed for disobeying the injunction. The strike brought worker’s rights to the public eye and Congress declared, in 1894, that the first Monday in September would be the holiday for workers, known as Labor Day.
The founder of Labor Day remains unclear, but some credit either Peter McGuire, co-founder of the American Federation of Labor, or Matthew Maguire, a secretary of the Central Labor Union, for proposing the holiday.
Although Labor Day is meant as a celebration of the labor movement and its achievements, it has come to be celebrated as the last, long summer weekend before autumn.
3. New Veteran-Preference Rule to Take Effect September 7
The DOL has overhauled a veterans-hiring law, requiring federal contractors with contracts of $100,000 or more to give preference for almost all available jobs to military personnel when they leave the service. Advertising such positions will cause the most problems. For companies doing business with the federal government, the good news is that the regulations implementing the 2002 Jobs for Veterans Act do not dramatically change the terrain. But that doesn’t mean that government contractors aren’t going to be scrambling to comply with one coincidental change that has nothing to do with the new regulations where contractors must advertise openings that qualify for veteran preference. That’s because the effective date of the new regulations, September 7, comes just two months after the death of the federal government’s America’s Job Bank Web site. With AJB gone, contractors will need to post jobs directly to the 50 individual states.
The new rules required by the Jobs for Veterans Act were designed to overhaul the last major veterans-jobs law — the Vietnam Era Veterans’ Readjustment Assistance Act of 1974 — and to prepare federal contractors for the influx of hundreds of thousands of job applicants, who are veterans of the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The new law requires that contractors doing business with the federal government give priority status to veterans for almost any job available on contracts of $100,000 that were entered or modified after Dec. 1, 2003.
The only jobs exempted from the new rules are executive or management openings, jobs that will be filled from within or temporary jobs lasting fewer than three days. Government contracts larger than $25,000 that are older than the Dec. 1, 2003 effective date will continue to follow the rules of the earlier 1974 veterans law.
The new regulations also expand the types of veterans service covered, adding “veterans who, while serving on active duty in the Armed Forces, participated in a United States military operation for which an Armed Forces service medal was awarded” — covering veterans of U.S. military actions since Vietnam.
The Jobs for Veterans Act regulations also expands coverage for veterans with disabilities, abolishing the previous system rating the percentage of serious employment or physical disability and replacing it with coverage of any veteran with “service-connected disabilities.”
The new regulations require contractors to list job openings with the appropriate state workforce job banks or employment offices, or third-party private job banks.
The new regulations were published Aug. 8 by the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs OFCCP, a unit of the Labor Department’s Employment Standards Administration that enforces laws that prohibit employment discrimination by federal contractors and monitors contractor compliance with federal equal-employment-opportunities laws. A copy of the final rule and a list of frequently asked questions are available at the DOL’s OFCCP web site: www.dol.gov/esa/ofccp/. Additional information is available at OFCCP’s toll-free help line 800-397-6251 or by e-mail at OFCCP-Public@dol.gov.
4. Social Security Administration Creates Resource for HR
With baby boomers beginning to retire, HR professionals will be faced with a myriad of questions from employees on how to prepare for and what to expect from Social Security. After consulting with SHRM, the Social Security Administration (SSA) has created a special resource page for HR departments. The site includes an online retirement planner (http://www.socialsecurity.gov/retire2/) that lets employees compute estimates of their future Social Security benefit. It also provides useful information for both HR professionals and employees on factors affecting retirement benefits such as military service, household earnings and federal employment. Here is a link for SSA resources for HR: http://www.socialsecurity.gov/hrm/
5. Web Will Top Newspapers in Advertising Dollars by 2011
A new report predicts the Internet will overtake newspapers in 2011 to become the nation’s biggest ad medium, calling it “a watershed moment” in the industry. Media investment bank Veronis Suhler Stevenson expects online advertising to hit $62 billion over the next four years, surpassing $60 billion in newspaper ad spending. The newspaper figures include online revenue from their Web sites and other digital properties. If that is stripped out, then Internet advertisement will overtake newspapers as early as 2010.
6. DHS No-Match Final Rules
On August 10, 2007, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued a final rule on safe harbor procedures for employers who receive a “no-match” notification from the SSA or DHS. The final rule was published in the Federal Register on August 15, 2007. Under current law, an employer is required to send SSA wage information on an annual basis. This information includes the employee’s name and social security number. When the employer’s submission does not match SSA records, SSA will send the employer a “no-match” letter. This “no-match” letter gives the employer notice, among other things, that the employee may not be authorized to work in the United States pursuant to the federal immigration laws.
The new final rule outlines safe harbor procedures that an employer should follow after receiving a “no-match” letter. These include requiring an employer to:
1. Take reasonable steps within 30 days to correct records and inform the relevant agencies;
2. Resolve any discrepancies within 90 days; and
3. Complete a new Form I-9 within 93 days if the discrepancy is not resolved within the 90-day period.
By following the safe harbor procedures, employers will avoid the risk of having had “constructive knowledge” that an employee identified in the “no-match” letter is not authorized to work in the United States.
According to the new rule, if an employer only gains “constructive knowledge” during the safe harbor process, the employer may continue to employ the individual until all of the steps in the safe harbor procedure are completed. However, an employer with “actual knowledge” that an employee is an unauthorized alien has no protection from liability.
The final rule also provides that employers should store records of verified resolutions along with the employee’s Form I-9. Employers are encouraged to document telephone conversations and to retain all SSA correspondence, computer-generated printouts and e-mails that show the employer has resolved the discrepancy.
7. National Guard and Reserve Mobilized as of August 29, 2007
The total number currently on active duty in support of the partial mobilization of the Army National Guard and Army Reserve is 77,781; Navy Reserve, 5,551; Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve, 6,776; Marine Corps Reserve, 5,923; and the Coast Guard Reserve, 307.This brings the total National Guard and Reserve personnel who have been mobilized to 96,338, including both units and individual augmentees. A cumulative roster of all National Guard and Reserve personnel, who are currently mobilized, can be found at http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Aug2007/d20070829ngr.pdf .
8. Significant Events this Month in Military History
1783 – The Peace Treaty of Versailles was signed between the USA, Britain, France, and Spain, ending the American Revolution.
1787 – United States Constitution Approved
1814 – US Naval Captain Oliver Hazard Perry defeated a British flotilla in the Battle of Lake Erie (War of 1812).
1814 – During a British naval attack on the City of Baltimore, Francis Scott Key composed a poem entitled “The Star Spangled Banner.”
1847 – American forces captured Mexico City, effectively ending the Mexican War.
1864 – Confederate troops abandoned Atlanta in the face of continuing attacks by federals under General W.S. Sherman (Civil War).
1899 – Founding of the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States
1908 – LT Thomas E. Selfridge was killed at Ft. Myer, VA, in a plane flown by Orville Wright. Selfridge was the first man to die in an airplane accident.
1939 – German troops invaded Poland, beginning World War II.
1939 – Britain and France declared war on Germany (World War II).
1941 – British Naval forces sank the German battleship Bismarck off the French coast (World War II).
1943 – The allied invasion of Italy began (World War II).
1945 – V-J Day, Japan signed formal surrender (World War II).
1951 – Battle of Heart Break Ridge began (Korean War).
1962 – United States Naval Sea Cadet Corps Incorporated
1967 – Siege of Con Thien Began (Vietnam War).
1969 – President Richard Nixon ordered resumption of heavy bombing of North Vietnamese targets (Vietnam War).
1994 – Operation Uphold Democracy began (Haiti).
2001 – Al Queda radical Islamic terrorists launch attacks using commercial airliners on the New York City Twin Towers, the Pentagon and an attempted strike that lead to the downing of United Airlines Flight 93 in Pennsylvania.
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Freedom Is Never Free – Support Our Armed Forces and Veterans!
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