“For too long the hard-working men and women who have
dedicated their lives work to serving our veterans have been bullied,
intimidated, and abused. They have been made villains by insiders in Washington
looking to push veterans out the door into ill-equipped, unprepared, private,
for-profit medical centers, and it has to stop,” said AFGE National President
J. David Cox Sr.
“These faithful public servants are the ones who first
brought to light that management was hiding wait lists. They’re the ones who
let us know when facilities are falling behind. And they’re the ones who know
best how to treat our veterans. Why can’t Congress give veterans the support
they need? Why won’t Congress fill the 49,000 vacancies at the VA?” he asked.
Since January’s hiring freeze was announced, VA Secretary
David Shulkin has been discussing the alarming number of vacancies at the VA,
and the need to fill them. "We have 45,000 job openings. That's too
many," Shulkin said in January. "I need to fill every one of those
openings in order to make sure that we're doing the very best for our
veterans." In the following months Shulkin began an upward revision of the
openings, and in May announced that there were 49,000 in the entire system –
with no plan to fill them in the works.
Instead, Congress passed the Department of Veterans Affairs
Accountability and Whistleblower Protection Act of 2017, which made it easier
to fire front-line workers for little or no cause at all.
“We cannot allow veterans to be forced to wait for the care
they deserve because Congress and the White House won’t take action,” said Cox.
“We will be holding rallies in cities across the country to raise the awareness
of thousands of open positions that no one seems interested to fill. Veterans
want and need the VA, but without it being properly staffed, it’ll be harder
and harder to give them the care they deserve,” he added.
