VA Fires Federal Unions
The Union Label
VA severs ties with most federal unions, terminating worker contracts
By Leo Shane III
Veterans Affairs leaders on Wednesday announced plans to terminate nearly all of its collective bargaining contracts with federal unions, upending employment agreements for hundreds of thousands of department workers.
The move affects members of the American Federation of Government Employees, the AFL-CIO (AFGE), the National Association of Government Employees (NAGE), the National Federation of Federal Employees (NFFE), the National Nurses Organizing Committee/National Nurses United (NNOC/NNU) and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).
AFGE alone represents about 300,000 employees working for VA. About 80% of the department’s roughly 450,000-person staff are union members.
Department officials said the move was made to “make it easier for VA leaders to promote high-performing employees, hold poor performers accountable, and improve benefits and services to America’s veterans.”
In a statement, VA Secretary Doug Collins attacked the unions as inefficient and harmful to veterans’ care.
Trump has signed executive orders to strip union’s collective bargaining, fire probationary employees and those in DEI positions, and re-categorize political appointees to limit their civil service protections. Union leaders have protested proposed cuts at VA and other federal agencies, and have filed numerous lawsuits against the president’s proposed changes to the federal bureaucracy. SCOTUS and multiple appellate courts knocked down injunctions against Trump’s mandates to restructure the government clearing the way for his vision of reducing administrative bloat and government inefficiency. In other words, the nail that sticks up gets hammered down.
Category: Big Pentagon, Veterans' Affairs Department
Did the same thing when I worked for the state in WI. Good time to retire.
Hack does not see the problem with this action. Government workers can just do all of their financial transactions at Bank of America. You know Bank of America, the one that sued Psul of The Ballsack about three years ago.
They can learn to code per ole Joe.
Wasn’t it Barrack who told them to learn code. Pretty sure Joe told them to install solar panels.
Well one of them created a bunch of shovel ready jobs but forgot to buy the shovels. Didn’t ole Joe drive around yelling at construction crews “you didn’t build that” while firing a shotgun in the air.
He also said he didn’t work for us. Seems to me that was the most truthful thing he ever uttered.
Naw, that was the Lightbringer himself.
US Federal Unions have been successful beyond the wildest dreams of any socialist anywhere.
The average salary in 2024 of a US Worker with:
– no degree $40,172
– 2 year degree $50,176
– bachelor’s degree $80, 236.
– masters $90,234
– doctorate $108,316
All worker average $66,621
Keep in mind this is skewed higher because:
Average Federal Worker Salary = $106,382
Federal workers on average make almost as much as the most highly educated population or 2% of the population. Yet the unions try to say that government workers can make more money in civilian life easily and they just stay out of some bizarre sense of loyalty, just making less money, happy as clams.
If I ever hear one of them bitching about the top 10%, that is a heavy eye roll, they are the top 10%.
I say fire them all, start over from scratch, and make their pay in line with the rest of reality. If they can find a better job in the US labor market with health insurance, a pension and all the other benes, by all means take it.
I am aware the salary is an average, and that plenty of federal workers make less than $66,000 a year. That doesn’t change what is going on here. We are practically the only first world country in the world that pays government workers more than the rest of the population.
I’m sure their retirement package is something to brag about. Toss in SS, and some are making nearly the same money not working as when they were not working. They’re making, if the truth be known, at or more than the average worker still working is making.
Don’t forget those other benefits, such as flying off to the other side of the country for a “conference”, and they make sure to check their golf clubs at the counter. Plus paid time off when snow is forecasted in the National Capital region, those government shutdowns where they still get pay, and of course, the ability for senior leadership to keep their side chicks on the payroll. And when you get nailed for nailing the staff, they let you quietly retire.
https://nypost.com/2021/10/12/senior-us-marshals-accused-of-having-sex-at-virginia-headquarters-documents/
Don’t forget junior legislative aids who record themselves having sex in the U.S. Capital, where it was undetermined if any violation or rule occurred.
That seems okay, apparently.
It’s OK, they’ve been buggering us for decades. Nothing to see here, move along, keep the line moving.
But that story disappeared faster than it showed up.
Who among us hasn’t had sex with a junior aide on the floor of the house? If you punish one, you have to punish them all.
I think that average may be for GS employees. GS gets a flat pay rate based on their level, plus location pay based on the cost of living i their area. WG employees (like me, WG-11) have a scale based on what equivalent civilian workers make in that field in your location. No location pay. It can still be lucrative, but not nearly equivalent to GS employees.
Not sure, the figures cited were for all Federal Employees, so one would think so. There are also a number of technical grades with specific advanced education (rocket scientists) for particular agencies that make well over $109k a year and SES grades that make over $150k. Then there is NSPS, FWS and a few others.
So some make more than than GS, other make less.
GS payscale: https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/salaries-wages/salary-tables/25Tables/html/GS.aspx
Locality pay: https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/salaries-wages/2025/general-schedule/
I’m just not sure how they got that 6 digit number average. There’s a triple shitload of federal employees not making nearly that much. GS pay is a good gig but it’s damn near impossible to get rid of the leeches and underperformers. I guarantee we could cut a bunch of GS12 through GS15’s in AMC, save a shitton of moneyand improve efficiency.
Locality pay, LEAP (which I support), and lots of other kinds of pay.
I’m anti-union at the core. Parasitic leeches for the most part.
I see no problems with this. President Reagan led the way on this when the air traffic controllers got out of hand.
One just needs to look at Europe’s problems with unions to see where we’ll end up without curbing the unions here now.
Back in the day when ‘ol Rawhide fired the Air traffic Controllers and decertified their union, one of my Mom’s friends commented that a friend of hers who was an ATC basically said that the fallout from that was simply a jettisoning of the “ash and trash” from their ranks!
My only experience with government employee unions was as a CBP contractor, on the outside looking in. I wasn’t impressed. From my vantage point, it looked very much like they were doing far too much to protect fuckups and providing very little to average or excellent employees.
You correctly discerned the role of union reps.
My favorite example was a CBP co-worker (that had a habit of doing dumb shi)t attempting to send a definitely not-suitable-for-work picture via government issued cell phone (no, it wasn’t of him) to a co-worker at another station. Epic fail. He sent it to the station chief at Eagle Pass, TX. 7 day suspension. Union negotiated it, 3 of the 7 were served over a 3 day weekend and he got to take PTO for the other 4. Oooooh, punish me harder.
Now I know why the website hasn’t been working for the last few days
Having watched government unions at the state level, I can opine there is no reason for their existence. Government employees are well protected in their civil service positions. In most cases, it is very difficult to fire one even for cause. Their dues are primarily used to bribe politicians with campaign contributions. Who in turn raise their pay. It is like the proverbial self-licking ice cream cone.