Starbucks CEO: Honor vets with a concert — and a job
WASHINGTON — Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz says Americans need to honor veterans — and hire them.
Schultz, a force behind an all-star Concert For Valor on the National Mall Tuesday marking Veterans Day, says service in Iraq and Afghanistan has become a hurdle rather than an asset for many veterans seeking civilian employment. It's one reason the unemployment rate for vets is higher than that among those who haven't served in the armed forces.
"The irony there is that there is a stigma attached to many of them about either PTS (post-traumatic stress) or brain trauma or things of that nature when in fact I can personally demonstrate through the hiring of people at Starbucks who have been veterans that they have done extraordinary things," he told USA TODAY's Capital Download Monday.
Employers are sometimes skeptical, and veterans often have little experience with such basic job-seeking skills as writing a résumé and going on an interview.
To help, Starbucks, which has committed to hire 10,000 vets over five years, employs a recruiter who is a veteran and "understands the language, understands the anxiety and can bridge the gap," Schultz says. In addition, the company has established a network of employees who are veterans to act as mentors. The company has hired more than 1,000 veterans.
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Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., released a report Tuesday by Congress' Joint Economic Committee that showed the recent 12-month average unemployment rate for post-9/11 veterans was 7.6%. For female post-9/11 veterans, unemployment was 8.3%. For younger vets, those 18 to 24 years old, it was 21.4%.
"Business leaders are mainly concerned with one thing: performance," Schultz, 61, told the weekly video newsmaker series. "I'm here to tell you these are high-performance people who can add real value to your business."
Schultz has co-authored a new book, For Love of Country: What Our Veterans Can Teach Us About Citizenship, Heroism, and Sacrifice, published by Alfred A. Knopf. In it, he writes that an unintended consequence of the all-volunteer force has been to create a "disconnect" between the overwhelming majority of Americans and the fraction of families who serve in the military.
He helped put together the concert featuring Bruce Springsteen, Carrie Underwood, Rihanna, Eminem, Metallica, Zac Brown, Jennifer Hudson and others. The show, sponsored by HBO and Chase, will air on HBO at 7 p.m. ET.
"It would be a tragedy if we spent 10 to 15 years in Iraq and Afghanistan, and we do something that is somewhat similar to Vietnam — not vilifying veterans like we did in the post-Vietnam years, but allowing them to become a distant memory," he says. "That would be tragic."