Federal Daily - February 2, 2010

OPM Plan Aims to Bolster Employment of Vets

The Office of Personnel Management on Jan. 29 issued a government-wide strategic plan clear away hiring barriers that may have prevented some vets from getting jobs as federal employees. The plan is part of the administration’s Veterans Employment Initiative to help vets transition from the military into the federal civilian workforce.

OPM consulted with leaders from the departments of Defense, Labor, Veterans Affairs, Commerce, Homeland Security, Treasury, and Transportation to develop the plan, which has four main focus areas. The plan aims to:

1. Establish a governance structure dedicated to the federal employment of vets.
2. Provide employment counseling, and help transitioning servicemembers with civil service career opportunities.
3. Create a marketing campaign to show vets and transitioning military the benefits of federal civil service careers.
4. Provide a one-stop Web site (www.FedsHireVets.gov, launched last week) to disseminate veteran employment information.

 “This is America’s first strategic blueprint to increase and support the hiring of veterans throughout the federal workforce,” said OPM Director John Berry. “This plan aggressively dismantles barriers for veterans seeking federal employment.  Additionally, it provides ongoing career support to veterans working within the federal workforce.”

To see more, go to: www.opm.gov/news/opm-releases-strategic-plan-on-veterans-employment,1543.aspx.

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Budget Includes Pay Parity, But Size Matters, Too

Pay parity is back on track in President Obama’s proposed 2011 budget, which includes a 1.4 percent pay raise for both military servicemembers and federal civilian employees.

But while “pay parity” has been an ongoing refrain among unions and other federal employee organizations for the past year, the issue has now quickly become the size of the actual raise.

National Treasury Employees Union President Colleen Kelley, for example, while she hailed the pay parity laid out in the president’s just-released budget proposal, pointed out on Feb.1 that the proposed pay raise itself is “very low.”

Her union, Kelley said, would now work “to explore possibilities of increasing the amount as the White House proposal moves through the legislative process.”

For more information, visit www.nteu.org

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Wives of Deployed Troops Seek More Mental Health Care

The wives of deployed Army servicemembers seek mental health services at a higher rate than other wives—and longer deployments increase the occurrence of mental health problems reported by wives left at home, a new study verified.

Researchers from the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, RTI International and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill conducted the study, which was published in the Jan. 14 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine. The largest study of its kind to date, the research team studied a sample of 250,000 wives, ages 18 to 48, of Army soldiers deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan.

“This study confirms what many people have long suspected,” said Alyssa Mansfield, the study’s lead author. “It provides compelling evidence that Army families are feeling the impact of lengthy and repeated deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan.”

The study showed that women married to deployed soldiers more frequently used mental health services and were more likely to be diagnosed with conditions such as depression, anxiety, sleep disorders, acute stress reaction, and adjustment disorder compared to the wives of non-deployed soldiers during the same time period. Researchers also found that the longer soldiers were deployed, the more likely their wives were to be diagnosed with a mental health condition and the more frequently they sought outpatient care.

Researchers cited a number of contributing causes, including fear for loved ones’ safety, the challenges of maintaining a household when a husband is deployed, coping as a single parent, marital strain due to deployment, and separation of an uncertain duration.

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