Donald Trump’s administration has long been selling the lie that they are doing everything they can to care for veterans. “Veterans can look at their country with pride knowing that we’re taking care of them, just like you told me to do,” Doug Collins, the secretary of the Department for Veterans Affairs, told Trump during a Cabinet meeting last week. “I asked you what to do, you said, ‘Go take care of my veterans.’ Well, that’s what we’re doing.”
In reality, the administration has waged an all-out assault on the welfare of the men and women who served the nation. The latest blow, appropriately coming ahead of Labor Day, all but entirely strips VA employees of their ability to organize as a workforce.
On August 6, the VA terminated most of its collective bargaining agreements with major unions, gutting protections for nearly 370,000 employees in one stroke. The agency framed the move as a way to “shift resources” back to veterans. The VA announced last week that it shifted a whole $39M “back to veterans.” In other words, the VA is spending a dollar to save a penny. The supposed savings aren’t even enough to employ five doctors full-time over the course of their careers.
Five major unions were affected: the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), the National Association of Government Employees, the National Federation of Federal Employees, the National Nurses Organizing Committee/National Nurses United, and the Service Employees International Union. Before the VA terminated its collective bargaining agreements earlier this month, approximately 375,000 VA employees were represented by unions. The number is now about 7,000.
The VA severing ties with unions comes at a time when the agency is hemorrhaging health care professionals due to layoffs, firings, buyouts, and forced retirements. Other doctors, nurses, and providers are simply opting to leave VA for more stable workplaces.
The VA denies it is headed toward privatization — just like it denied that mass layoffs of 80,000 employees wouldn’t impact veteran care. But facts have a way of catching up. After pressure from Congress and veterans’ groups, the administration trimmed its plan back to 30,000 job cuts. Still, the VA has lost thousands of health care staff this year alone, including 688 physicians and 1,882 registered nurses. At the same time, the administration requested a record $441 billion VA budget for 2026, while planning to eliminate nearly 3,000 more positions — including over 2,000 from the Veterans Benefits Administration, which handles disability claims and education benefits.
This is privatization by attrition, pouring billions into for-profit, expanded community care programs while hollowing out the VA’s direct-care system. At the end of the day, the only ones left holding the bag are veterans — particularly those who are most vulnerable, including those who rely on Medicaid to supplement their VA care and those who have no major hospitals or health care facilities within their area.
The unions are part of what keeps the VA strong. AFGE members, for instance, are often the first to blow the whistle when wait times stretch too long or when outsourcing to private contractors threatens patient care. National Nurses United has fought consistently for safe staffing levels and against efforts to privatize VA hospitals. Their advocacy has often protected veterans from dangerous policy experiments pushed by politicians. Silencing them undercuts a crucial check on the system and will ultimately mark the beginning of the end for the VA on which most veterans have come to rely.
The VA’s move to break with these unions sends a chilling message to federal workers across the country: collective bargaining rights don’t matter, and the National Labor Relations Act isn’t something they are following. It states that no one can be pressured to join or not join a union. Not to mention basic American contract law.
History shows us that weakening unions does not lead to better services. In fact, the opposite is true. When frontline staff lose their bargaining power, turnover increases, morale plummets, and the most skilled employees leave for more stable workplaces. And this is exactly what Trump wants.
The VA argues that reclaiming 180,000 square feet of office space once used by unions will somehow expand services. But that space will be useless when there are no workers inside. This is all by design. It’s an all-out assault on the VA and, in turn, an all-out assault on our veterans. Many of the post-9/11 veterans are entering some of the most important years of their lives and need good, reliable health care — not a system that is cannibalizing itself.
The assault on organized labor should be seen for what it is: part of a larger effort to privatize the VA by weakening its workforce. When unions are out of the way, it becomes easier to outsource care to for-profit providers who see veterans as customers rather than patients. We are headed toward a place where private providers can send veterans denial letters:
“Sorry, that IED blast that took off your legs was found to be your fault.”
www.rollingstone.com
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