Rhode Island’s congressional delegation is curious about how nationwide staffing cuts at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs are affecting VA workers in the Ocean State.
In a Sept. 16 letter collectively penned by U.S. Sens. Jack Reed and Sheldon Whitehouse and Reps. Seth Magaziner and Gabe Amo, Rhode Island’s all-Democratic delegation asked Veterans Affairs Secretary Douglas Collins to explain recent department data that shows the department has lost thousands of employees this year.
“VA employees are essential to serving our Veterans,” the delegates wrote. “The alarming rate at which employees are leaving VA jeopardizes Veterans’ ability to timely access services and benefits they have earned and will undermine the VA’s ability to meet its mission for many years.”
The delegates cited the July 25 issue of the VA’s workforce dashboard, which they say shows the loss of more than 8,700 employees who worked with veterans in the current fiscal year, including 2,129 registered nurses, 751 physicians, 1,283 medical support assistants, and 1,294 claims examiners.
The dashboard also shows that the VA’s year-over-year hiring pipeline is down in all categories, with the amount of job postings, applications and new hires lower this year than at the same time last year. The Veterans Health Administration reported 13,403 fewer employees across all categories than it had at the start of this fiscal year.
The letter asks for a facility-by-facility breakdown of employee departures in Rhode Island since Jan. 1, as well as data on canceled or rescheduled appointments tied to staffing shortages, plus a list of current job vacancies.
The delegates want data for Eagle Square VA Clinic, Eagle Street VA Clinic, Providence VA Medical Center, Middletown VA Clinic, Providence VA Regional Benefit Office, and the Providence Vet Center. They asked for occupational details on each departure such as reasons for leaving the VA, years of employment with the VA, and whether the employee resigned or was terminated.
The letter asks Collins to respond by Sept. 30.
Pete Kasperowicz, Press secretary for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, said in an email Friday that the department would respond directly to the delegation’s letter.
The VA previously announced on Aug. 6 that it was immediately nullifying collective bargaining agreements for VA workers, including those associated with the American Federation of Government Employees, the National Association of Government Employees, the National Federation of Federal Employees, National Nurses Organizing Committee/National Nurses United, and the Service Employees International Union.
The department terminated the contracts to comply with a March 27 executive order from President Donald Trump, which excludes parts of the VA, plus other agencies, from the federal labor management statute that allowed for collective bargaining. In 2024, over 1,900 VA employees who were part of bargaining units spent “more than 750,000 hours of work on taxpayer funded union time — including some who are paid more than $200,000 a year,” according to the VA’s news release.
“With no collective bargaining obligations, those hours can now be used to serve Veterans instead of union bosses,” the release reads.
An estimate of the number of employees affected ranges from 350,000 to 400,000 people.
Rhode Island’s congressional delegates had a different interpretation.
“Your recent decision to terminate collective bargaining agreements for VA employees will almost certainly make the problem worse, as approximately 80% of VA employees belonged to a union,” they wrote Collins.
This story was originally published by the Rhode Island Current.
