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Veterans hiring award goes to Ceres UPS
UPS ceremony
During a Monday morning ceremony, Erica Ramage, Talent Acquisition Specialist at the Ceres UPS Center (left) accepts the “Veterans Employer of the Year” award from Lourdes Uranday, chairperson for the Stanislaus County Employer Advisory Council. - photo by Jeff Benziger

A Monday morning ceremony held at the Ceres warehouse of UPS honored that company with one of five businesses statewide with the 2022 “Veterans Employer of the Year” awards from the California Employer Advisory Council (CEAC).

The Stanislaus Employer Advisory Council conducted the short awards ceremony at the Hil-Mor Drive warehouse of UPS.

“What this award recognizes is employers who consistently demonstrate positive policies towards U.S. veterans in hiring and promotion as well through employee retention efforts with ongoing training and benefits,” said Felicia Romo of the Employment Development Department whose job as the Local Veterans’ Employment Representative is focused on jobs for veterans within the Workforce Services Branch.

UPS in Ceres won in the “Private Large Business” category along with Joby Aviation, Inc. of Santa Cruz, and JVS SoCal in Los Angeles.

Other winners were: the California Veterans Assistance Foundation of Bakersfield in the “Small Business Private” category and the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire) in Sacramento in the “Government/Private Sector” category.

UPS was chosen for maintaining a diverse workforce that includes reservists, national guards, separating service members, war veterans and military spouses to include dependents. 

UPS believes that the leadership traits exhibited from current service and former service members result in increases production, enhanced attendance, and overall improved performance. Former reservist and veterans increase overall employee retention.

Furthermore, employees with military backgrounds are identified for roles of higher responsibility quicker than those that have not been in the military.

UPS has recognized that even those that have served in roles like military recruiting can make a tremendous impact on our outside sales effort. We recognized long ago that if individuals can sell the military to newly graduated high school graduates, they can sell our products to the customer base we are attempting to attract. On any given day out of 500,000 employees, there are approximately 900 which UPS supports while they are on a leave of absence to serve the country. UPS offers supplemental pay for those service members who are actively deployed so that they do not experience undue hardship as a consequence of their military obligation.