In 2017 President Donald Trump signed the VA Accountability and Whistleblower Protection Act of 2017 which brought accountability to the Veterans Administration. The VA Accountability and Whistleblower Protection Act of 2017 did the following:
- Made it easier to discipline bad actors at the VA, including senior executives.
- The Act strengthened protections for individuals who come forward and identify problems occurring within the VA.
- Held VA employees accountable for poor performance, and more than 4,300 VA employees removed, demoted, and suspended.
- Created a 24/7 White House VA Hotline.
- The VA increased transparency and accountability by launching an online “Access and Quality Tool,” providing veterans with access to wait time and quality care data.
- The President signed the Veterans Appeals Improvement and Modernization Act, overhauling the VA’s complicated appeals system and offering veterans faster appeals decisions.
- This legislation helped put the VA on track to deliver a record number of decisions to veterans by the end of fiscal year 2018.
During a House Veterans’ Affairs Committee hearing, Democrat Rep. Conor Lamb (PA-17) addresses the issue of the collective bargaining rights and union rights of VA employees. Returning to the previous policies before the Trump Administration revamping Re-unionizing VA employees will mean a return to policies which will prevent the accountability and removal of VA employees for poor performance and other policies that were detrimental to our Veterans.
Transcript
Mr. Chairman: Recognize Representative Conor Lamb for 5 minutes.
Rep. Conor Lamb: Thank you Mr. Chairman, thank you Mr. Secretary for joining us. Welcome. On the topic of the archives in military records, I just want to commend you, and in particular Christy As and Aaron Scheinberg in your department for the attention that they showed to this and communication that they maintained with me, it really was exemplary so that reflects well on your early tenure.
On another topic I want to address the issue of the collective bargaining rights and union rights of VA employees. They were blatantly disregarded and dishonored by the previous administration. I come at this with a strong belief that the best way we will serve the mission of the VA, taking care of the veterans, is by taking care of the people whose job it is to actually take care of them. And I think the anecdote you gave from Mr. Kelly and you’re opening was very powerful in that the thing that that veteran’s son is left with was really about the employees of the VA and how they treated his father. And the way we make sure that happens is we make sure the VA employees themselves are treated respectfully inhumanely and with the professionalism that they deserve. So I was happy about President Biden’s executive order, and just for those who didn’t see it, I want to be really clear that he has ordered, “it is the policy of the United States to encourage union organizing and collective bargaining in the federal government and that the federal government should serve as a model employer. That order was issued on January 22nd of this year. I know it hasn’t been a long time, but, you know, two months later we still have, in my state of Pennsylvania, a VBA in the city of Philadelphia where the union officials have been offered a conference room, where before the Trump Administration they had multiple offices to do their work. We still have union organizing officials whose job it is to represent workers doing their representation on their own time, at a cost of themselves not even for free at a cost to themselves because their representation time has not been restored yet by the local VA. And so, the impression we’re left with is that the VA on the ground is dragging their feet in implementing President Biden’s order. If this was some sort of new right or new set of working conditions you might be able to understand why two months would be needed. But I think the frustration that I get from VA employees is this has been all right for a long time we bargained office space a long time ago, we bargained official time a long time ago, we just want it restored to what it was before Trump, and so why is that take you so long. So if you could just explain to us a little bit today what is being done to implement the executive order, why it’s taking so long, and give us your commitment that you will try to speed things up and just show the employees the respect in urgency that they deserve.
