The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1991 mandated the Department of Labor (DOL), Veterans’ Employment and Training Service (VETS) to provide specific employment information and services to all military personnel and their spouses about to separate or retire.  This program became known as the Transition Assistance Program (TAP).  VETS, along with its partners in the Departments of Defense, Veteran Affairs and [now] Homeland Security, decided the best approach to present this information would be in a workshop format.

Workshops were made available to all military installations in the Continental United States, Alaska, Hawaii and Puerto Rico.  Trained Disabled Veteran Outreach Program Specialists (DVOP) and Local Veteran Employment Representatives (LVER) conducted the job-search workshops.  The addition of a national contractor helped facilitate workshops in States that had large TAP commitments.  However, for various reasons, VETS could not provide these same services to overseas military installations.  Instead, workshops overseas were provided by Department of Defense personnel as additional duties.

Assistant Secretary Frederico Juarbe Jr. made TAP one of his priorities when assuming the leadership of VETS.  He recognized that even with the limitations VETS faced, we were obligated to provide these same quality services to those serving so far away from the U.S. job market.  VETS began expanding the DOL/VETS TAP workshops to overseas sites in fiscal year 2003. 

In the first phase, the services each identified one military installation in four different countries; Japan (Navy), Okinawa (Marine Corps), Korea (Army) and Germany (Air Force).  It was decided the most cost efficient means for providing these workshops would be with the use of the VETS’ national program contractor, the Native American Management Services (NAMS), who would provide first priority to local military spouses for these positions. 

However, VETS faced complex legal issues in each of these countries before contractor support could begin.  The United States has agreements with foreign governments, known as the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), which determine what services and support can and cannot be provided by U.S. Forces or other government agencies.  SOFAs vary greatly from country to country.  While SOFA negotiations were underway to allow contractors, four federal VETS staff with TAP backgrounds began providing these important workshops on the date promised by the ASVET.

Today, the first phase is complete.  VETS has successfully negotiated SOFA to allow contractors in Germany, Japan, Okinawa, Korea and also the United Kingdom.  Additional second phase work on SOFAs continues in Italy and Spain, and future third phase negotiations are planned for Bahrain, Turkey, Portugal and Belgium.  Mr. Juarbe has set a goal for VETS to be fully expanded to all overseas military installations offering TAP, approximately 60 locations, by the end of fiscal year 2005.

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