WASHINGTON—The unions representing the 320,000 remaining workers at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) slammed the GOP Donald Trump regime’s official termination of their collective bargaining agreements, announced August 6.
They’re also pondering their next moves, especially since Trump VA Secretary Doug Collins, a former right-wing Republican congressman from Georgia, had cut off dues checkoff for the unions several months before. And Collins exempted unions for cops, security guards, and firefighters, some 4,000 workers in all. They can keep their union contracts.
The most caustic comments about Collins’s coup came from the two largest unions at the VA, the Government Employees (AFGE) and National Nurses United (NNU). Trump previously called AFGE in particular “hostile.” It’s been the lead union on many of organized labor’s dozens of lawsuits against Trump’s union-trashing and bashing, as it has the most to lose.
AFGE President Everett Kelley called the contract termination a clear case of “retaliation” for the union’s outspoken leadership in lawsuits and public statements against Trump’s trashing of agencies, workers, and contracts. His union is considering its next moves.
NNU, which represents 14,000 VA registered nurses, put the terminations in broader terms. They’re part of the Republican president’s “class warfare against working people of America.”
NNU also told Collins and Trump, “We’ll still see you in court” by keeping its lawsuit against the contract terminations, which violate federal laws and the Constitution, going. NNU and other unions sued in U.S. District Court in San Francisco in March. The judge there sided with the unions and issued a nationwide injunction against Trump.
But an appellate court overturned that injunction—at Trump’s demand—while still keeping the anti-Trump lawsuit alive on the merits. If NNU and its allies win, the contracts could be restored.
“Secretary Collins’s decision to rip up the negotiated union contract for majority of its workforce, 1/3 of whom are vets, is another clear example of retaliation against AFGE members for speaking out against the illegal, anti-worker, & anti-veteran policies of this administration,” Kelley, a veteran, elaborated in AFGE’s statement.
“Collins’s decision to rip up the negotiated union contract for majority of its workforce is another clear example of retaliation against AFGE members for speaking out against the illegal, anti-worker, and anti-veteran policies of this administration,” he said. Other unions that lose contracts covering their VA members include the Service Employees, the National Association of Government Employees, and the National Federation of Federal Workers, a Machinists sector.
SEIU issued a critical anti-Trump tweet, at least for now: “This administration’s weakening of labor unions is an intentional move to block dissent. Trump wants an America where he can wreak havoc, and no one can fight back.”
“Our civil service has been stressed to an unprecedented degree, and the critical services federal employees provide, and the American people rely on, are at risk as long as this assault on collective bargaining rights goes unchecked,” National Federation of Federal Employees/IAM President Randy Erwin previously said..
Trump VA Secretary Collins said 4000 cops, security guards, and firefighters can keep their union contracts. But nurses—including National Nurses United’s registered nurses—doctors, benefits specialists, housekeepers, electricians, painters, food service workers, lawyers, dentists, pharmacists, crisis responders, mental health specialists, cemetery workers, janitors, and more all lose their pacts and their protections.
Reasons behind attacks
There are two real reasons, Kelley explained, for why “Collins wants AFGE out of the VA.” One is on personnel: AFGE “successfully fought against disastrous, anti-veteran recommendations” from a special commission that planned to shut rural hospitals and opposed Trump’s cut of 83,000 VA workers nationwide through his so-called Department of Government Efficiency.’
The other reason Collins and Trump hate AFGE, Kelley stated, is because the union “consistently educated the American people about how private, for-profit veteran healthcare is more expensive and results in worse outcomes for veterans.
“We don’t apologize for protecting veteran healthcare and will continue to fight for our members and the veterans they care for,” he vowed.
“This is just the latest salvo in the battle to break the spirit of working people in this country,” National Nurses United added. “But we will not be broken. We will continue to fight for and assert our constitutionally guaranteed collective bargaining rights and to speak freely against policies that hurt veterans and the public.
“That is our duty as nurses, and we will continue to be fierce advocates for our patients. This is in spite of Trump’s administration’s unprecedented, outrageous, and irresponsible attacks.” Erasing the contracts “is a blatant attempt to bust our unions and to silence the nurses and workers who are standing on the frontlines to protect our country’s fundamental institutions.
“This administration is hellbent on silencing nurses and other VA workers to steamroll destruction of the VA. This administration is marching toward the privatization of veteran care so they can move billions in taxpayer money out of the VA system, which is proven to provide excellent veteran-centric care, and into the coffers of private health care corporations run by billionaires.”
Trump “has no respect for the Constitution, but we believe strongly our right to join together to collectively bargain is constitutionally protected. It cannot be swept away through an overreach of an executive order based on spurious claims.” NNU called the order, which led to the August 6 contract trashing, “unconstitutional retaliation” against unions for exercising free speech rights.
“Nurses never abandon our patients, and we will continue to fight for the funding and safe staffing levels our patients deserve,” NNU vowed…Contract rights are vital to that advocacy, the nurses added. “Veterans deserve nurses who are free to advocate for their care without fear of retaliation, discipline, or losing their jobs.”
In his announcement, Collins snidely said the end of the contracts means VA will save money by not having to pay union shop stewards “lost time” for representing members. Ending contracts, Collins stated, will also ease firings of workers whom VA bosses consider “low performers.” It’ll also force shop stewards to serve veterans, not “union bosses,” another GOP insult.
And Collins snapped that unions use VA office space, phones, and fax machines, costing the VA money it should be collecting in rent. Federal law lets shop stewards meet workers they represent and for collective bargaining sessions in those offices.
In his first term, Trump threw all federal worker unions out of their small offices in government buildings and took away their phones, files, fax machines, and computer access. He also said union reps had to represent workers on their own time and on their own dime.
A U.S. District Judge in D.C. overturned those moves, and more, as both illegal and unconstitutional, but the appeals court later reversed her. That district judge is now on the U.S. Supreme Court. Her name is Ketanji Brown Jackson.
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