VA terminates most of its union contracts, appearing to disregard OPM guidance

The Veterans Affairs Department announced Wednesday that it is terminating most of its contracts with federal employee unions effective immediately, making it the first agency to formally implement President Trump’s executive order aimed at stripping two-thirds of the federal workforce of their collective bargaining rights.

Collective bargaining agreements between VA and the American Federation of Government Employees, National Association of Government Employees, National Federation of Federal Employees, National Nurses United and the Service Employees International Union have all been terminated, the department said.

In March, Trump signed an executive order citing a rarely used provision of the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act to strip most federal workers of their collective bargaining rights under the auspices of national security. But unions have argued the edict—and its invocation of national security—are mere pretext for retaliating against labor groups for challenging the White House’s personnel policies in court, activities ostensibly protected by the First Amendment.

VA’s decision appears to violate April guidance—and assurances from the Justice Department to a myriad of judges—from the Office of Personnel Management instructing agencies not to formally terminate union contracts until “the conclusion of litigation” or until OPM issues additional guidance. By extension, it also clashes with the administration’s assurances to judges, borne out of that original OPM guidance, that agencies would wait. Unions have repeatedly noted that while those contracts remained in place as a technical matter, management across government have ended the automatic collection of union dues and ceased participation in negotiations, arbitration and other grievance procedures.

In a press release announcing the decision, VA officials accused the department’s unions of “rewarding bad employees for misconduct,” referring to their successful legal challenge against expedited firings that took place during Trump’s first term under the VA Accountability and Whistleblower Protection Act.

“Too often, unions that represent VA employees fight against the best interests of veterans while protecting and rewarding bad workers,” VA Secretary Doug Collins said in a statement. “We’re making sure VA resources and employees are singularly focused on the job we were sent here to do: providing top-notch care and service to those who wore the uniform.”

In addition to the law not passing muster with federal judges, the 2017 law was primarily used to remove low-level employees for minor offenses, rather than to fight mismanagement and misbehavior among the department’s supervisors and executives as originally intended.

Exempt from the CBA terminations were the department’s roughly 4,000 police officers, firefighters and security guards, in line with the executive order’s exceptions for law enforcement personnel. Unmentioned but also exempt are eight smaller unions, which the VA admitted in April was because those groups had not recently challenged the administration or the department in court or grievance proceedings.

AFGE National President Everett Kelley blasted the move in a statement Wednesday.

“Secretary Collins’ decision to rip up the negotiated union contract for the 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,” Kelley said. “The real reason Collins wants AFGE out of the VA is because we have successfully fought against disastrous, anti-veteran recommendations from the Asset Infrastructure Review Commission, which would have shut down several rural VA hospitals and clinics, opposed the Trump administration’s plan to dismantle veteran health care through the cutting of 83,000 jobs, and consistently educated the American people about how private, for-profit veteran health care is more expensive and results in worse outcomes for veterans.”

And National Nurses United described the decision as “class warfare against working people.”

“We know this administration is hellbent on silencing nurses and other VA workers to steamroll the destruction of the VA,” the union wrote. “This administration is marching toward the privatization of veteran care so they can move billions of 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."