SALT LAKE CITY (ABC 4 News) – Steven Lloyd is a member of the Army National Guard.
But looking for a job in the private sector became frustrating. For months he was unemployed.
“A lot of it (job search) was online,” said Lloyd of Orem. “I went in to a couple of places in person to turn in resumes, did follow up with phone calls. Not many people got back to me. It was just kind of frustrating."
Lloyd is like millions of unemployed veterans. It’s estimated that 22% of veterans are unemployed. That figure is twice the rate of the rest of the nation’s unemployed.
But Lloyd’s now got a career to go along with his veteran status.
Lloyd who is a member of the 116th engineers is going through an apprenticeship program to become a heavy equipment operator.
“It's great,” he said. “These are my childhood dreams. It's fun stuff."
His luck changed when he started browsing online. He ran into a website called Helmets to Hardhats. www.helmetstohardhats.org.
It's tailored for military veterans looking to make the transition.
"I think this is a partnership America has to have,” said retired Major General Peter Cooke. “We have to allow these great Americans who fight for us to be able to come back and we have to make an extra effort to hire them."
Thursday, members of the Local Operating Engineering Union, (www.oe3.org.) offered lawmakers a tour of their training facility near Magna.
Several of Utah's labor unions are the driving force to make sure veterans get a hard hat after their tour of duty.
"These people are volunteering their time to find veterans and employ them,” said Darrell Roberts the executive director of Helmets to Hardhats. “I think it's a great fit and the right thing to do.”
And Helmets to Hardhats worked for Steve Lloyd. After hooking up with the program he landed a full time construction job with Ames Construction.
“When I got the phone call it was amazing,” said Lloyd.
And he said it’s a good paying job. As an apprentice he’ll earn top dollar, according to union officials.
