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Detroit Trade School Hit: Vets Demand Adequate Training & Jobs

By VVAW

Vets are used once (by the rich to fight their wars) and thrown away (when we can't even get the benefits we were promised). But there are some institutions which would like to see vets used twice--once in a rich man's war and then again to that the institution can squeeze some bucks out of us through the GI Bill.

In Detroit, the VVAW chapter took on the "International Transportation Institute" (ITI) where, for only $2000 you can get a VA approved, 3-week course in driving trucks. The advertising which the institute uses says that "3 out of 4 people trained by ITI find employment after training." They advertised, for instance, that Chrysler needed 350 big rig divers at the same time Chrysler was in fact laying off the drivers they had.

All over the country, everything from newspapers to TV to matchbook covers advertise schools which are "approved for veterans." All of these schools speak to a real need of vets--we have to have jobs, and they're hard to come by, particularly when we're looking for a job which pays enough to support us and our families. They government statistics say that unemployment has fallen to "only" 7.5%; their figures lie. For instance, they conveniently leave out all the people whose unemployment compensation has run out; in fact, at least one out of ten people who want to work can't find jobs. For vets, especially younger vets, that figure is even higher.

Seeing the economic crisis, and seeing the bind that many vets are in, some schools use these conditions to pimp off vets by trotting out their phoney promises in hopes of trapping vets and ripping off their money. And vets need jobs bad enough to go into these schools.

The Detroit VVAW chapter joined forces with the Unemployed Workers Organizing Committee (UWOC) to stage a demonstration outside the offices of this particular rip-off school. While they were picketing outside the school, they were joined by several truck drivers. "I had a graduate from this school working with me," said one of the drivers; "He didn't even know how to turn on the ignition." Two weeks later, VVAW and UWOC took the demonstration to the Regional VA office to demand that the VA stop approving this kind of rip-off school.

After discussing the demonstrations, the chapter decided that their approach had been wrong. And the way that VA managed to sneak out of any kind of responsibility made the mistake clear. As carried in one of the Detroit newspapers, the VA response was that they would be careful about who they approved in the future. According to the VA Director, "I can't say that we've done that in the past (checked to verify information provided to the VA by the schools), but I can tell you that we're certainly going to do it now." Already in some parts of the country, the VA is dropping the accreditation of schools and throwing the vets enrolled in them off the GI Bill. Vets don't need any more of that; what we need is jobs or the training necessary to get jobs.

Nor can we let the VA slide away from its responsibility that easily. We can all see there are jobs that need to be done, everything from repairing roads to working to straighten out VA records. The VA is just one part of the government which functions in the interests of the rich and cuts back whenever there aren't profits to be made. VVAW can and should demand jobs--jobs from the VA, jobs from the government, jobs from the capitalist bosses for who the government now operates.

The VA can't choose our schools for us by accrediting what they like and dropping schools they don't like; this, like other petty restrictions written into the GI Bill, must go. And we don't need rip-off schools like ITI in Detroit that sucks us into their sham schools playing on our real needs for decent paying jobs. Vets need the ability to get the training which will help get good jobs and GI Bill which is adequate to pay for that training.