Japhet Rivera; VA hospital director paid to resign
Bob sends us this link to the Daily Caller about Japhet Rivera, the former hospital director in Dannville, Illinois. Rivera was being investigated for retaliation against a whistleblower. He went to the Merit Systems Protection Board to protect his job. The VA was AWOL from the hearings, they didn’t present any evidence against Rivera, because thier plan was to buy him off, instead of firing his ass for not doing his job and for sexual escapades on the job. According to Rivera;
“They tried to fire me, but because of my rights to go to the MSPB to review the case, an administrative law judge reviewed the case and she was about to send me back to work for a couple of [reasons],” Rivera told TheDCNF.
“One was the VA failed to provide all the information that they used to make a decision. It really wasn’t all that important … but at any rate they didn’t provide it to me, so that was a major” reason the judge sided with him, Rivera said.
“She was going to return me to work and the VA said they just wanted me out of there,” Rivera said. “Under the agreement for my resignation, the VA gave me seven months of pay and all my expenses…They also paid for the attorney’s fees and basically everything.”
They paid him $86,000 instead of going through the process to fire him, you know, because it’s only tax payer money and there’s an endless stream of it.
Category: Veterans' Affairs Department
An $86000 go away settlement for doing a shitty job and ass grabbing with your subordinates. Not a bad job or deal if you can get it. What a fucking turd! They should had strapped his ass to a VA hospital gurney and gave him minimal treatment and rations for 7 years instead of 7 years pay. Plus just enough psychotropics to keep him in high anxiety for 7 years.
I wonder how many vets could have been taken care of for routine care with the $86k they paid to shitbird Rivera?
It would have likely cost the VA more money to go through the entire process to fire him. The process is extremely long, and they would have had to have paid him his full salary and benefits the entire time.
Unfortunate as hell, and he obviously knows he got over on the VA.
Easily could be the case. Between unions going to bat for people and the NLRB bending over backwards to ensure “worker’s rights aren’t violated”, it’s extremely difficult to fire Federal employees these days.
Here are a few examples from around 5 years ago.
http://dailycaller.com/2015/12/28/unions-say-no-discipline-for-feds-who-wont-work/
I know this guy was a supervisor, and thus not a union member. But the various boards don’t much seem to care whether the appellant is a supervisor. Neither do many arbitrators.
Working for the VA, the shit that I have seen in just a few short years leaves me unable to be shocked by anything that happens here.
I’m a federal employee but have never been a union member. Even without union involvement the process to shitcan someone is long and trying. Unions do tend to make it worse.
The point I was trying to make was that Federal supervisors aren’t generally eligible for union membership – so since this guy held a supervisory position, he wasn’t a member. Should have probably used different language above.
Didn’t mean to imply that every Federal non-supervisory employee was a member of a union; that’s decidedly not true. Most aren’t – only about 31% of Federal employees were as of last figures I found concerning the issue. That’s a higher percentage than in the private sector (less than 20%, if I recall correctly), but was considerably lower than among state/local government employees (36% or so, as I recall).
Here is my take away from the article:
Rivera is transferred to PR (don’t know why) where his boss was transferred because of investigation # 1.
Rivera whistleblows on boss (investigation # 2). His boss then retaliates by opening investigation # 3 into Rivera.
Rivera is transferred to Kansas because of # 3 where he was able to keep his nose clean for a few months and gets a promotion to a fourth site. There he reverts back and, wouldn’t you know it, investigation # 4 opens and takes root.
This cancer is institutionized within the VA.
No surprise here.
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