Kaine touts solution to transition veterans into workforce during Staunton speech

Just a year removed from high school, Mary Baldwin College student Alixandria Reinhard has a career in mind, and the job search once that career is over.

Central to U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine’s speech on campus Wednesday was legislation he has introduced to ease the transition of military service men and women to the civilian workforce.

Reinhard is a freshman cadet in the Mary Baldwin’s Virginia Women’s Institute for Leadership who wants to earn a commission to serve as an officer in the U.S. Army or the U.S. Coast Guard.

Kaine’s proposal to turn skills acquired in the military into civilian credentials when cadets such as Reinhard get out could make such a transition easier in the relatively distant future.

“I fully support that,” said Reinhard, of Palm Springs, Calif. “I hope it does turn out great, and they are able to find those equivalent (civilian) positions for the veterans, because that will be me in a few years.”

Kaine, the first-term Democratic senator and former Virginia governor, spoke with VWIL cadets as part of a series of stops throughout the state during the week. He has touted economic development and his first bill in the federal upper chamber — a legislation he has dubbed the Troop Talent Act.

The nation shouldn’t tolerate the unemployment rate among ex-soldiers lingering higher than the national jobless rate, Kaine told about 60 cadets and administrators inside Francis Auditorium. His proposal would address that by getting military specialty skills recognized in the regular workforce, he said.

Veterans might run into plenty of praise and appreciation for their time serving the country, but potential employers should have a way to better value the training former servicemen and women acquired during that time, he said.

“If they don’t know the skills that you have — the technical skills and the leadership skills that you have — you might not be able to get the kind of traction back into the workforce that you ought to be able to.”

Kaine spoke for about 10 minutes and then took questions from cadets.

He told VWIL students and local media after his talk that he wanted to speak with them as part of his new role on the Senate Armed Services Committee, for which he has seen soldiers, their family members, reservists and defense contractors.

“This is about the future, because this is the generation of military leaders that could be head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 25 years,” he said during remarks to the media.

Earlier Wednesday, Kaine spoke to city and business leaders at Roanoke. He is scheduled Thursday to speak with women business leaders in Harrisonburg before taking an economic development tour in Waynesboro.

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