When trust breaks down at the VA, veterans pay the price

For nearly 30 years, I have worked inside the Department of Veterans Affairs adjudicating disability claims for veterans and their families. For more than 13 of those years, I have also served as an employee advocate with the American Federation of Government Employees at VA Central Office. 

Those roles have given me a rare vantage point into the VA’s culture, priorities and values. I have worked under secretaries appointed by both Democrats and Republicans, alongside employees across disciplines and job series. One thing has always been constant: VA employees are deeply committed to serving our nation’s veterans. Today, that commitment is being tested, and increasingly undermined, by the leadership of VA Secretary Doug Collins.

The killing of VA nurse Alex Pretti, and Secretary Collins’ public response to it, brought that strain into sharp focus. Pretti was a federal employee, a VA nurse and a member of AFGE Local 3669 who spent his career caring for veterans in moments of crisis. He was killed after coming to the aid of a woman who had been shoved to the ground by a federal agent. Video and eyewitness accounts show that he was pepper-sprayed, forced to the ground, beaten while restrained and then shot multiple times by federal agents. For VA employees across the country, this was not an abstract news event. It was the violent loss of one of our own.

Employees told me they expected VA leadership to pause, reflect and center the life that was lost and the community that was grieving, including the VA community in Minneapolis. Secretary Collins acknowledged that Pretti was a VA employee, but his public statement quickly pivoted to political commentary, blaming state and local officials for failing to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement and framing the killing as part of broader “chaos and death” in American cities. Employees across headquarters described that shift as jarring and dispiriting. To them, it reinforced a growing sense that even tragedy is filtered through ideology rather than met with institutional care, restraint, and humanity.

For many employees, Secretary Collins’ response was not surprising. Since arriving at VA, his policy decisions have steadily undermined trust and stability. VA employees have faced workforce reductions, the rollback of telework, the loss of reasonable accommodations for employees with disabilities and the elimination of collective bargaining rights for large portions of the workforce. Many have come to view these decisions as punitive in effect and disconnected from any clear effort to improve care or service to veterans.

That erosion of trust deepened when Secretary Collins publicly announced plans to eliminate approximately 83,000 VA positions, roughly 15% of the department’s workforce, without presenting a workforce analysis or explaining how such reductions would affect veteran care. At the time, he assured Congress and the veteran community that frontline health care workers would not be included. That assurance collapsed when an internal VA document surfaced outlining potential cuts to thousands of frontline clinical positions.

When Rep. Mark Takano, D-Calif., confronted Secretary Collins about the document during a House Veterans’ Affairs Committee hearing, Collins did not deny its authenticity or address the contradiction. Instead, he dismissed it as “pre-decisional” and objected to its disclosure. Employees expressed deep concern that reductions to frontline health care workers were being actively considered while the secretary publicly promised the opposite. The disconnect between public assurances and internal planning led many employees to question whether leadership statements had any credibility at all.

Those concerns are not theoretical. Independent reporting has cited findings from congressional investigators showing that VA staffing losses, overwhelmingly within the Veterans Health Administration, are already contributing to longer wait times, delayed care and mounting pressure on remaining clinicians. In that context, claims that workforce reductions will not affect veteran care ring hollow. Employees see one reality inside the department and hear another described publicly. Veterans ultimately pay the price.

Few actions have angered VA employees more than the decision to terminate collective bargaining rights for large portions of the workforce by reclassifying employees as “national security” personnel. Employees have been unequivocal with me: they view this not as a legitimate security determination, but as a pretext to weaken a union that has been effective in holding leadership accountable.

The justification strains credulity for many employees. Nurses, claims examiners, schedulers, canteen workers and Board of Veterans’ Appeals attorneys were suddenly deemed “national security” employees under a narrow provision of the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978. That statute permits suspension of bargaining only where an employee’s primary duties involve national security work, something most people associate with the FBI or CIA, not a canteen barista making a morning latte. Many employees view this reclassification as a political maneuver to silence dissent while worker protections are stripped away.

The consequences were immediate. With bargaining suspended, management gained unilateral authority to change working conditions without employee input. At the Board of Veterans’ Appeals, higher production quotas were imposed without employee input, coinciding with increased attrition and growing concerns about declining decision quality and rising remand rates. Across VA Central Office, employees reported abrupt revocations of long-standing reasonable accommodations, particularly related to telework. Many told me they now feel exposed and unprotected when working conditions change overnight.

This matters for veterans. Collective bargaining has never been about shielding poor performance. It is how employees across the VA raise concerns that directly affect patient safety, access to care and the timely delivery of benefits. While most VA nurses and clinicians work in medical centers, the systems that support them – IT platforms, supply chains, benefits processing, national policies and program oversight – are coordinated from headquarters. When employees can speak up about unsafe workloads, staffing gaps or broken systems without fear of retaliation, problems can be addressed before they delay care or harm veterans. When that voice is silenced, accountability erodes, risks go unaddressed and veterans pay the price.

At the same time, employees received agency-wide communications focused on cultural and symbolic issues, such as alleged anti-Christian bias and the removal of flags, that felt divorced from the day-to-day work of serving veterans. In more than 13 years as an employee advocate, I personally have never seen a complaint involving anti-Christian bias, and if one had arisen, existing law already provides clear protections under Title VII. Employees were left wondering what problem these messages were meant to solve.

Employees understand this instinctively. When trust and integrity break down, veterans are the ones who suffer. A workforce that does not trust its leadership cannot sustain morale, retain experience or deliver high-quality care. Former VA Secretary and Procter & Gamble CEO Bob McDonald understood this well, emphasizing that culture and trust are the foundations of institutional performance.

Taken together, the response to tragedy, arbitrary workforce reductions, the elimination of collective bargaining, rigid performance mandates and inconsistent candor form a pattern. Each decision strains trust. Together, they hollow it out.

The Department of Veterans Affairs does not need disruption for its own sake. It needs leadership that respects the law, engages honestly with Congress and understands that caring for veterans requires sustaining the workforce that serves them. Without trust, no amount of authority can substitute for leadership, and veterans ultimately bear the cost.

Douglas Massey is the president of AFGE Local 17 and an attorney advisor at the Board of Veterans' Appeals.