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Remarks Delivered by
U.S. Secretary of Labor Elaine L. Chao
First meeting of the Veterans Employment and Training and Employer Outreach (ACVETEO)
Washington, D.C.
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Thank you, Chick [Ciccolella, Assistant Secretary for Veterans Employment and Training Service]. And thank you Secretary Nicholson [Secretary of Veterans Affairs] for attending this first meeting of the Advisory Committee on Veteran's Employment and Training and Employer Outreach. Finally, let me thank each of you all for taking time from your very busy schedules to help America's veterans.
This committee contains men and women of exceptional commitment who represent veteran's organizations, employers, and the public sector. Your experience and insight will help us craft policies and programs to ensure that our returning veterans have full access to opportunity in the nation they have served so well.
At the Department of Labor, we take our responsibilities to veterans, the Guard and Reserve and their families very seriously. In 2005, I announced the first-ever regulations implementing the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act of 1994 — known as USERRA. This law had been on the books for many years. But it took Chick and his leadership team to put teeth into that commitment with the first-ever set of regulations implementing the law. The regulations make clear the rights and responsibilities of employers and transitioning service members.
VETS is also providing personal employment assistance to our wounded and injured service members at major military medical centers under our REALifelines program.
In addition, some in this room served on the President's National Hire Vets Committee and helped the Department launch the Hire Vets First program.
So let me thank all of you for volunteering to serve on this committee, I am looking forward to your assessments and recommendations for improving employment services to veterans.
America's veterans were there for all of us. Now it's our turn to be there for them by providing the training, education, and services that can help them find new careers.
I am so pleased to join you today. And I hope we can take a moment to take a photo to commemorate this inaugural meeting.
Before the photograph is taken, I would like to administer the oath of office. Please raise your right hands, and repeat after me:
I [state name] do solemnly swear or affirm that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign or domestic, that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same, that I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion, and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office upon which I am about to enter, so help me God.
Thank you so much.
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