The best Veterans Day honor anyone can provide a returning veteran is a good job. Here’s the story of Helmets to Hardhats doing just that.

James Gilbert is director of the AFL-CIO Union Veterans Council.

Whether they served on the beaches of Normandy, the rivers of Southeast Asia or the deserts of the Middle East, Nov. 11 is the day we honor our country's veterans. Originally proclaimed a holiday by President Wilson in 1919, Nov. 11 was chosen because major hostilities of WWI were formally ended at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918 with Germany signing the Armistice. 

AFGE Secretary-Treasurer J. David Cox has been named new chair of the AFL-CIO Union Veterans Council. He previously served as the council’s vice chair. The Union Veterans Council focuses on veterans’ issues and advocates public policies to improve the quality of life for U.S. veterans and their families. The two primary areas of focus for veterans are access to good jobs and to quality health care. Cox says:

The care of our nation’s veterans is of utmost importance to me. They have sacrificed so much to this country.

Richard Fleming served 12 years in the U.S. Army and has worked for the past 20 years at the Veterans Health Administration’s (VHA's) Temple Texas hospital. He began with an entry-level job in the kitchen and, with training and education, became a surgical technician. He also is one of the thousands of modestly paid VHA workers whose jobs have been arbitrarily downgraded.

Nobody talked  to me about it. I found out I was downgraded through a memo….I was downgraded by people who do not ever see what I do on a day-to-day basis.

Thousands of hardworking Veterans Health Administration (VHA) employees—including many veterans—have seen their job classifications arbitrarily downgraded over the past two years. Tomorrow, VHA workers from health care facilities in 20 states will march from Veterans Affairs headquarters in Washington, D.C., to the White House.

Registered nurses at Palmetto General Hospital in Hialeah, Fla., last night overwhelmingly voted—86 percent—to join National Nurses Organizing Committee-Florida, the state affiliate of National Nurses United (NNU). Earlier this month, AFGE signed up 700 medical professionals at the Veterans Affairs’ (VA’s) Edward Hines Jr. Hospital in Hines, Ill.

The more than 200,000 workers who give first-class care to our nation’s sick and wounded veterans signed a new collective bargaining agreement yesterday with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).