Privatization and Project 2025: The Covert Attack on Veterans, Employees, Unions and the Middle Class
UNION PARTNER CONTENT
As a union representative representing thousands of employees who provide care to tens of thousands of veterans in New York and New Jersey and a licensed practical nurse for more than 30 years, I know all too well how the current anti-union, anti-worker climate directly impacts the care our nation’s veterans receive.
For decades, my union, the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) has been sounding the alarm over several critical issues at the Department of Veterans Affairs, and how these issues impact our veterans.
Simply put: VA is underfunded, understaffed, and, unprotected.
AFGE members are committed to fulfilling the mission of the VA: to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan. Unfortunately, we are routinely met with anti-worker, anti-union attacks from Congress, the White House, and proponents of privatization, like the authors of Project 2025.
For years special interest groups have been trying to dismantle the VA so they can profit off the backs of our nation’s heroes. These special interest groups supported the 2018 VA Mission Act, the law that opened the floodgates for privatization by moving VA to a vouchering system, scaling back hiring and creating a commission to identify which VA facilities should be closed, to in turn force veterans to rely on expensive, private health care.
Each budget season we see tens of millions of dollars allocated to the VA, but our facilities still need renovation, our technology is still outdated, our employees are still underpaid, and we still have more than 40,000 vacancies nationwide. To understand why this is, we must follow the money.
Over the past years, the VA has increased spending on private, for-profit health care.
Now, veterans tell us time and time again; they want to receive their health care at the VA, which is the largest integrated healthcare system in the nation. Recently, two independent, nationwide patient surveys found that once again, VA health care outperformed non-VA health care.
If veterans want to receive care at the VA and the data shows that veterans receive more quality care and a lower cost at the VA, why is there such a push to privatize? Because corporate billionaires, the Heritage Foundation, Donald Trump and other elected officials care more about money than veterans. Profit over people.
The VA has been understaffed for decades, crippling our workforce and contributing to the false narrative that VA employees cannot and do not do their jobs. AFGE members are proud and work hard to ensure that each veteran receives the specialized care they deserve, however, we cannot do our jobs to the best of our ability if we don’t have the resources.
The VA New York Harbor Healthcare system including Manhattan, Brooklyn and St. Albans hospitals has nearly 200 vacant positions. In North Port there are 42. East Orange has 64 vacancies and Buffalo has 98. This is not an isolated issue. This is not a New York/New Jersey issue. This is a nationwide issue that must be addressed for our veterans.
Instead of fully staffing our facilities, Project 2025 would instead further outsource VA care to costly, for-profit providers, place unrealistic performance standards on doctors and replace benefit claims processors with AI.
Our veterans deserve to receive care from health care providers who specialize in veteran care and when they have questions about their benefits, they should be able to pick up the phone and talk to human, a not an AI chatbot.
While AFGE supports advances in technology, we do not support using it to eliminate jobs at the detriment of veteran care.
Another facet of Project 2025’s plan to dismantle the VA is to eliminate the Office of Accountability and Whistleblower Protection. This should alarm all workers, unions, veterans and their families as this office protects employees who report waste, fraud and abuse and to independently investigates and addresses their claims. Eliminating it is not only an attempt to silence workers, but it will allow corruption and other abuse to go unchecked.
Privatization and outsourcing not only diminishes services to our veterans and pits workers against each other, but are an attack on veterans’ jobs, as 1 out of 3 VA employees are veterans themselves.
AFGE members at the VA are dedicated to doing our jobs. We live in every town, village, county and borough in New York and New Jersey and contribute in all aspects to the benefit of our communities and our veterans.
Our union cannot allow the negative rhetoric and political narratives against our members to continue all so private health care providers can make a fortune off VA healthcare.
AFGE stands for fairness and equality, and our fight is far from over. Unions are the lifeblood of the middle-class and our communities are dependent on these jobs to provide for our families and boost the economy.
We are proud of the work we do, and although the VA and our union rights are under attack, we have not and will not turn our backs on America’s heroes. We ask our elected officials and VA leadership not to turn their backs on us.Geddes Scott is the President of AFGE Local 1988 at the St. Albans VA Medical Center in Queens, NY, and president of the AFGE NY/NJ VA Council 246 representing 4,000 VA employees in New York and New Jersey.
The post Privatization and Project 2025: The Covert Attack on Veterans, Employees, Unions and the Middle Class appeared first on New York Amsterdam News.