Mike Levin on VEVRAA

A brief history of Rep. Mike Levin's refusal to combat veteran employment discrimination as Chair of the House Of Representatives Veterans Affairs Subcommittee on Economic Opportunity.

AI Generated Transcript

my name is brother Logan M Isaac and in this video I'm going to talk about representative Mike Levin of California and his history of ignoring veteran employment discrimination since almost as soon as he took office in 2019. so in 1974 there was a law passed that has come to be known as the Vietnam era of veterans Readjustment and assistance Act and the or vevra for short and the law is in title 38 of the U.S code section 4212 and I'm interested in particular in their reporting requirements which is outlined here in subsection C on the right hand side you can see I've pulled it straight out of the Congressional Record and I've underlined the same things I've highlighted here veterans are supposed to be able to file complaints under vevra and the Secretary of Labor is required by law by the subsection to report on the number of complaints filed by veterans the actions taken by the department and the resolutions provided by the department

so as early as 2012 I've been able to find these reports and the number of complaints that they've reported on you'll notice that from 2012 to 2017 the only thing that they are reporting on is the number they're not reporting on the actions or the resolutions and it's also noteworthy that the number is relatively stable between 50 and 60 until 2017 when the number jumps from 53 and 16 to 124 in fiscal year 2017. now that's I don't know why that number jumped but the the year the fiscal year is important because the fiscal year 17 there at the bottom would have been published and released in the in the year 2018 right before representative Mike Levin takes office in January on the 3rd of January in 2019 Mike Levin is sworn into the House of Representatives he is assigned to among other things the house Veterans Affairs committee and he's awarded the chairmanship of the subcommittee on Economic Opportunity which you can see here the subcommittee on Economic Opportunity has legislative oversight and investigative jurisdiction over the education of veterans employment and training of veterans the house V8 the full VA committee is chaired by Mark tecano and it's important to point out that neither Mark takano nor Mike Levin have any military service of their own so their civilians making decisions that affect veterans that then they won't feel the consequences of and that will be important as we talk about what some of this the reports should be reporting in and and the the story that that data would disclose if they had it correct so starting in May of 2019 just four months into his uh freshman term I contacted him I was living in Maryland at the time he was not my representative but he was and Remains the chair of the Economic Opportunity subcommittee under HVAC and I asked very early on about these reports not knowing that his subcommittee might be the primary body that they were that it was transmitted to but I'd ask that it seems like there's some information missing they're only reporting on the number but I want to know and they're required to report on the actions and resolutions uh one of his staff members Faith Williams responded quickly saying that they they'll bring it to the committee's attention I hadn't heard anything within a couple of days and so I followed up on May 20th um and still had heard nothing then in July of night of 2019 on the 26th uh Mike Levin was on a panel hosted by the American Enterprise Institute and partnered with Brad wenstrup a representative out of Ohio a Republican representative who has had military service and they were had they were talking about veterans issues and something that they wanted to do around veterans opportunity and so in a moment I'll play the video and you can I'll also highlight my question to Mike Levin on C-Span and also his response before proceeding on the slideshow before any fourth Administration stands up under the vet op Act uh would you be willing and able to hold a hearing underneath the uh in your committee the equal Economic Opportunity subcommittee under HVAC to look into how to consolidate and expand and strengthen those civil rights that do exist under four soldiers and Veterans and secondly would either of you or both of you be willing to sign letters open letters to federal agencies holding into account for those civil rights laws for soldiers and veterans that they are not enforcing or do not seem to know about well I want to thank you first of all for your service and for asking that I'd be happy to work with our committee staff and talk about the the hearing schedule that we have coming up I know we have a August field hearing and then I'm sure we'll have plenty more opportunities uh throughout the session and I'd be happy to work with you and somewhere in here is Faith Williams from my personal office so she is in the back I don't think Justin is here from uh from HVAC who kind of helps manage the the calendar but we'd be happy to speak with you about that because I think it's an important concern and I'm sure that you would love having a hearing on implementation of the vet op act the the second question I'd be happy to to look at uh bad and if you could Circle up with faith before we go this morning I'd be happy to follow up

so the second thing he had mentioned it's related but distinct there's a a letter sent by David trone to attorney general Barr and FBI director Christopher Wray about failing to enforce hate crimes protections for service members which Mike Levin never signed even though he represents Camp Pendleton has and still will so sometime in the fall of 2019 no later than August 18th of 2019 seven months into 11's term the fiscal year to 2018 DOL vets report was sent to Congress and his committee must have seen it if they weren't the committee that this report went to and in this report just as with many others it claims compliance with 4212c you can see that in the upper left on page five as well as the URL where you can find this report yourself on the right I've copied straight out of the Congressional Record these three things that they're supposed to include the number actions and resolutions and as you can see on page 21 of the fiscal year 18 report only the number of complaints is reported no actions no resolutions and Levin would have received this or would have been responsible for knowing about this as the chairperson of The Economic Opportunity subcommittee under HVAC so later in the year um I continued to ask and follow up on that AEI panel where he said he would be willing to consider a hearing I asked with the subject line HVAC EO hearing on November 1st just a few days before Veterans Day I hadn't heard anything and so I emailed again on December 6th with a copy of that letter that Mike Levin's office didn't sign that came out of trone's office asking about hate crimes failing to protect service members from hate crimes um and the staffer I have been in touch with from the get-go is Faith Williams who you saw in the video there on the left in red then uh kovid uh came in 2020 but sometime in September of 2020 the fiscal year 19 report came out and yet again only the number is included on page 20 of the report this and even though on page five the report falsely claims to be compliant with 4212 subsection C this is the second report that Mike Levin's office would have seen that would have been false that he would have been aware of based on the information I was providing the following year once again this was published sometime in October of 2021 the fiscal year 2020 report and I had also uh in tandem with my email with Levin's office I was also pressuring the Department of Labor itself the compliance director William Torrens and the chief investigator uh uh Christopher Shepard Robert Shepard I'm sorry and I I can only assume as a result of that pressure I applied directly to the agents in charge miraculously the fiscal year 2020 report is the first in eight eight years nine years to include not just the number of complaints but the actions and the resolutions you can see there's a a table on page 18 of that report and I consider that a success then just a few weeks before recording this video sometime in November of 2022 the fiscal year 2021 report came out again Mike Levin was in office he was the chair of the subcommittee on Economic Opportunity and this report claims to be in compliance with 4212c on page five however on page 28 you can see that the fiscal year 2021 report excluded any and all requirements that it was that the the labor department and Mike Levin's office would have known was statutorily required by federal law um I mentioned this to Levin but it appears that for some time either only the 2021 report or the 18 and 19 reports that Levin has been accepting false reports to Congress from the Department of Labor I don't know why but it does appear that he knew based on the information I was providing him that the labor department was not meeting its statutory obligations under 4212c so you might be asking yourself why do I care so much well first of all the story that that data would tell if it were being accurately reported is that 807 complaints have come in from veterans over the last 21 years that's 38 complaints from veteran from veterans every single yeah every single fiscal year 38 more than one every month veterans making complaints under vevra make up the largest investigative caseload for the labor department no statutory uh statutorily protected Community is making more complaints and the military we know that you're supposed to shut up and drive on so that that veterans are overcoming that stigma of shutting up and driving on learning that they are protected and then also making complaints speaks volumes as to the the scope of the problem and just to make matters even worse vevra only protects about 80 percent of the military Community the veteran Community it excludes from its protections any peacetime veterans without service-connected disabilities that's 20 percent of the veteran population that it doesn't include so in almost every metric this is a big deal there you know no other group has a higher caseload with the labor department and it's not even protecting the entire community uh at this during the same time from 2000 to 2020 no other group was denied their claims more frequently than veterans you can see here they have their complaints receipt or returned a finding of Merit less than eight percent of the time less than eight out of a hundred veterans are being told that their complaints have Merit that they that what they have complained about is true that is statistically significant veterans are trying to claim the rights that they should have as Defenders of democracy but no other group in the DOL is being denied that same right more than veterans so how do I know and why do I care well I was one of those 807 veterans in the last 21 years to file a a complaint under vevra on September 13 2016 after a failed internal investigation had been triggered at Duke University I turned to the Department of Labor and I opened up the case number 100201831

I was concerned that I was being treated differently because I'm I'm a veteran and I'm seeing as less than fully qualified and there were also ongoing other incidents that exposed me to increased scrutiny and have created a hostile work environment this was in September of 2016 um and uh just you know there is so little concern for facts and accountability by the Department of Labor that quote unquote investigations can be little more than checking the Box making veteran civil rights worth less than the ink and paper they're printed on if you want an example take just one anecdote from my own complaint against Duke University just a few months before I filed my complaint the university had this harassment policy on the books it's not the entire policy it's just the front page in the first paragraph and you can see it was last updated in June of 2016 just a few months before I filed putting Duke under federal investigation then after I filed once Duke was under investigation uh one which they fought with the help of an anti-labor Law Firm the the university quietly updated their harassment policy to include veteran status the only change that occurred on November 7th uh and that was three months into their investigation and almost seven or eight or nine months before the investigation was concluded when I brought this to the attention of the Department of Labor after I brought this to their attention I was then told that my complaints lacked sufficient evidence I cited this instance as well as two pages of other instances in which the United States code and the code of federal regulations were violated and I even spoke with the solicitor general at Department of Labor and at every turn my request for civil rights and equal representation under the law was denied so Mike Levin's history of ignoring veteran employment discrimination is a long one at almost every opportunity he's had to make a change he's walked away and most recently he's accused me without any evidence of being disrespectful to his staff of ignoring or or making him feel uncomfortable or staff uncomfortable and trying to make it seem like I'm the problem and not this rampant discrimination harassment against veterans and I think that's unacceptable and I hope you will too and I hope that you'll reach out to Mike Levin Mark tecano and other Congressional Democrats and Republicans to make sure that veteran employment discrimination ends