Bravo to companies working to employ veterans

Veterans deserve our thanks, but you can’t feed your family with gratitude. That’s why it’s so great to see Nevada businesses make it a priority to hire veterans.

As the Review-journal’s Rick N. Velotta and Bailey Schulz reported Nov. 11, many of those working on the Raiders stadium once wore a military uniform. A-1 Concrete Cutting & Demolition is doing contract work on the project, and around 30 percent of the company has military experience. Joe Monteiro, the company’s owner, doesn’t seek veterans out of compassion. He sees a direct correlation between military skills and the ability to succeed in the private sector.

“In construction work, you need team players,” he said. “You don’t need a guy that thinks he knows it all and can do it all because you can’t. If you don’t have your co-workers working alongside of you, they’ll bury you, and how they bury you is by not performing or making you look bad.”

PENTA Building Corp, which is the general contractor on the convention center at Caesars Forum, also employs a large number of veterans, around 15 percent of its workforce.

“We understand there’s great talent in the military,” PENTA marketing manager Tim Putnam said. He likes “being able to say we’ll help them transition to civilian life, and hopefully we gain a great employee in the process.”

Veterans aren’t just finding work in the construction industry. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation started the Hiring Our Heroes corporate partnership in 2011 to help veterans and their spouses find job possibilities. Hiring Our Heroes opened a Las Vegas chapter last year, and it’s already helped 50 veterans secure jobs.

One of those veterans is Jose Mendez, who’s going to retire from the Air Force in December after a 20-year career. Hiring Our Heroes connected him with PENTA, and that led to a job offer. Along with the dignity of work, Mr. Mendez said the job will allow him to provide for this family.

Outgoing Gov. Brian Sandoval has also taken steps to help veterans. In 2015, Nevada created a veterans coordinator to help identify state jobs that veterans could successfully fill. The next step would be to reduce Nevada’s burdensome occupational licensing requirements. This would allow veterans to pursue new careers without having to go into debt to meet paperwork and other bureaucratic requirements.

These efforts are working. They’re especially important after the nation’s armed forces grew following 9/11. The national unemployment rate for veterans was 2.9 percent in October. That’s lower than the national unemployment rate of 3.7 percent. That’s news worth celebrating.