Posted on 07/10/2017 5:07:38 AM PDT by Strac6
Five hundred and forty-eight Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) employees have been terminated since President Donald Trump took office, indicating that his campaign pledge to clean up “probably the most incompetently run agency in the United States” by relentlessly putting his TV catch phrase “you’re fired” into action was more than just empty rhetoric.
Another 200 VA workers were suspended and 33 demoted, according to data newly published by the department as part of VA Secretary David Shulkin’s commitment to greater transparency. Those disciplined include 22 senior leaders, more than 70 nurses, 14 police officers, and 25 physicians.
Also disciplined were a program analyst dealing with the Government Accountability Office, which audits the department, a public affairs specialist, a chief of police and a chief of surgery.
Many housekeeping aides and food service workers — lower-level jobs in which the department has employed felons and convicted sex offenders — were also fired.
Scores of veterans have died waiting for care while VA bureaucrats falsified data to procure monetary bonuses, but fixes have been slow to come by largely because the union that represents VA employees has used its political muscle with Democrats to emphasize job security for government employees.
Former President Barack Obama originally appointed Shulkin as a VA undersecretary. By the end of the Obama administration, however, Shulkin had grown increasingly frustrated with the American Federation of Government Employees union and other groups defending bad employees’ supposed right to a government check even when they hurt veterans.
“Just last week we were forced to take back an employee after they were convicted no more than three times for DWI and had served a 60 day jail sentence … Our accountability processes are clearly broken,” Shulkin said at the White House.
In addition to reluctance by managers to vigorously pursue firings, the overturning of firings after the fact by the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) — often with little public acknowledgment — has been a longstanding problem.
Shulkin asked for new legislation that reduces the role of MSPB, especially when firing senior leaders. Congress passed the Department of Veterans Affairs Accountability and Whistleblower Protection Act in answer, and Trump signed the bill in June.
The published data predates those new powers, and does not note which disciplinary actions were later overturned.
One record shows a “senior leader” being removed January 20, while another record shows a “senior leader” being demoted April 21. Those appear to refer to the same person — disgraced Puerto Rico VA director DeWayne Hamlin — who returned to work in a lesser job after he appealed to the MSPB.
Former Obama Secretary of Veterans Affairs Bob McDonald seemed to have so little grasp on firing employees that in August 2016, he said that he had fired 140,000 employees, a figure that made little sense since that would be nearly half the workforce.
He said “you can’t fire your way to excellence” and blamed “negative news articles” for a morose culture, rather than the individuals perpetrating the misconduct described in those articles. (RELATED: Feds Return Nurse Accused Of Manslaughter To Work)
Though high-level hospital officials were affected, according to the data covering the first six months of the Trump administration, relatively few disciplinary actions occurred in the central offices where Washington bureaucrats work. Those employ fewer people than the hospitals, but repeated scandals have also shown such employees looking out for one another to preserve each others’ jobs.
There were five firings in the Veterans Health Administration Central Office, including one senior leader. There were also two in the Office of General Counsel, and one in the office of Congressional and Legislative affairs.
The data does not include employees’ names, and does not show which employees were on new-employee probationary status. Employees can be fired much more easily during their first year.
During the Obama administration, McDonald lamented that in the private sector “you cut a deal with the employee and you’re able to buy them out,” but said you cannot do that in government.
Yet VA repeatedly made five and six-figure payments to bad employees to get them to quit after they threatened to gum up the works by appealing disciplinary actions. The department even allowed Hamlin to offer a low-level employee $300,000 to quit after she refused to help management retaliate against a whistleblower who exposed Hamlin’s arrest.
The agency paid more than $5 million in settlements to employees under McDonald, which had the effect of encouraging bad employees to relentlessly appeal and make unsupported charges of discrimination when they were targeted for discipline, in an often-successful attempt to convert punishment into reward.
Shulkin said he “will look to settle with employees only when they clearly have been wronged … and not as a matter of ordinary business.”
Keep draining. Also Other departments
housekeeping aides and food service workers JOBS SHOULD ALL BE FILLED BY UNEMPLOYED VETERANS
Not what most people would think of when they read the word ‘fired’ in the title.
Those disciplined include 22 senior leaders, more than 70 nurses, 14 police officers, and 25 physicians.
= = = = = = = = = = =
That isn’t good.
The SENIOR leaders should have been canned if their was/is enough evidence to ‘discipline’ them.
The rest may be borderline BUT the SENIOR OFFICIALS are the cause of the problem.
I learned in my medical training in the 70s. Stay the hell away from the VA. Anyone who believes the VA has anything to do with providing healthcare has no experience with “the system”. Outside of a few congressional districts overpopulated with seniors (Gainesville, FL for example) VAs are really just about “care taking” the infrastructure but not actually using it.
Go into any VA and the ONLY department that is modern and well appointed is the administration offices.
I think it was Wall Street Journal this week talking about problems in the Indian Health System which mirror the VA. Doctors kill patients through neglect, no one is ever fired, sometimes reassigned. Administrators waste money on art, solar panels, bloated staff that aren’t caregivers, no one loses a job or suffers consequences.
I worked as a physician in the VA during the 80’s in three different departments. There are a lot of good, conscientious people there but the system grinds them down and often forces them out, leaving the time-servers behind.
Yes. It is TIME to Flush the Deep State. Pull the handle multiple times and apply a plunger as needed.
Good. Many in the VA despise Veterans. It is government “make work”...but they don’t work.
The key point in this article is the need to be able to cripple the strangle hold that the union has on the process. Wisconsin proved it can be done, now it has to be applied to the federal government as a whole.
Yes, but the nursing staff in the VA is not a collection of hard-working dedicated professionals abused by inept leadership, they are a very big part of the problem.
After spending 5-days in-patient at the Long Beach VA hospital where the physical condition of the facility was unsafe, the food gawd-awful (not joking), unsanitary showers and filthy toilets down the hall (no in room bathrooms), and 98% staffed by insensitive Nurse Rachet obama-daughter types that manipulated patient pain meds for sport, darned near killing me (NOT kidding).
Fire them all.
Blessed winning.
service employee union?
I know of 2 excellent VA hospitals. One in Amarillo, TX and the other in Lubbock, TX.
There are some joint ventures in TX with the State of Texas and the VA.
This may not be the normal situation, but it does happen.
"Other"....you are too modest kind Sir
how about "ALL"
In a 2015 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, one senator noted that “The Federal Register indicates there are over 430 departments, agencies, and sub-agencies in the federal government.”
In my opinion you shouldn’t be able to work at a VA unless you are a Veteran.
I found my sweetie dead on the floor 6 years ago. Something that I didn’t know was that I got my name on the death certificate by calling 9 -11. We were never married but had been great friends since 2nd grade.
At first I was a suspect and the cops asked me to stand out on the porch. But they calmed down when I told them he had been treated for high cholesterol.
So there was an automatic autopsy. There were no visible signs of trauma, the house had not been ransacked or broken into. I had seen him on Sat. a.m. when we did a hauling job together and I had a message from him later that day. I suspected nothing.
But he was an old drug (speed) addict that he had picked up in the Navy and he had moved to prescription drugs. He only had use of one arm plus 15% of the other and was in a lot of pain so he said.
I could not get him on the phone on Sunday but that was not unusual as he would sleep all day Sunday and be fine on Monday.
But the Dr. who did the autopsy said it looked like the man had never taken care of himself. I was taken aback as he had 3 appointments with the VA the week before and had two more appointments for that next week that I had to cancel.
I waited 90 days for the autopsy to be given to me. He had died of double bacterial pneumonia from the black and white mold in the basement of his new place. He had lived there 13 days. But it was so full of mold spores that they would hit you in the face when you walked in the door. The toilet had overflowed besides and the entire living room carpet was soaked. I offered to help him clean it up, but he said no he would just let it dry.
I can’t blame anyone. He was very hard to get along with and would not listen to reason and of course I knew nothing about anything, in his opinion.
He was really a mental mess and the military and the VA enabled him.
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