Thursday, June 5, 2014

National Review: While Vets Wait, VA Employees Do Union Work

"In 2012, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs paid at least $11.4 million to 174 nurses, mental-health specialists, therapists, and other health-care professionals who, instead of caring for veterans, worked full-time doing union business."
“So many health-care providers were on that list — nurses or physical therapists or whatever they may be — when so many veterans are falling through the cracks,” a Gingrey aide tells me. “It’s kind of shocking that these paid employees wouldn’t be fully dedicated to patient care.”

In total, the VA spent at least $13.77 million on 251 salaried employees performing full-time union work. Others, who were not included on the list provided by the VA, work part-time for unions at the taxpayer expense. In fiscal year 2011, the latest on record, the VA used 998,483 hours of this “official time,” costing taxpayers more than $42 million.

In Columbia, S.C., the VA pays one health technician a $40,706 salary to work for the American Federation of Government Employees.

At that same location, CNN reported in January, a 44-year-old veteran named Barry Coates was forced to wait a year for a colonoscopy, despite intense pain, constipation, and rectal bleeding. When Coates finally got his appointment, doctors found a tumor the size of a baseball — Stage 4 colorectal cancer that had metastasized elsewhere.
Meanwhile a Fox News Poll found that "by a 50-31 percent margin, voters think enemy combatants held at Guantanamo Bay get better health care than veterans. Nearly one in five is unsure (18 percent)."

20 comments:

deborah said...

St. Hillary of the Veterans. Details at 11:00.

Unknown said...

Unions can all go to hell.

edutcher said...

Brought to you by the Democrat Party.

Unknown said...

The unions are desperately spinning the media (and the media of course comply) in the states largest school district. Jeffco.

The unions actually prefer to be under-achievers. The unions cannot possibly let teachers and parents decide - or those nasty charter schools. The left actually prefer teacher union control over improvements and achievements for students.

again - unions can all go to hell.

Unknown said...

The Union's # 1 priority is the union. Protect and serve the union.
Of an for and by the union.
The union shall prevail!

Dust Bunny Queen said...

There used to be a time and place for Unions. When labor laws were basically non-existant and people worked in horrible and even life threatening conditions at the mercy of their employers, the unions were important in bringing these conditions to an end.

Those times are past. We have OSHA, safety inspectors, lots and lots of protective labor laws. Now the Unions exist not to protect the workers but to support themselves and to enrich the professional Union leadership.

The unions have become bloated, even more corrupt than before, are destroying business and abusing the taxpayers who are forced to support them. The economic damage done by the unions is uncountable.

Eric the Fruit Bat said...

Polio was eradicated in this country decades ago and yet the March of Dimes® lives on.

Go figure.

ricpic said...

Eleven million? Chunk change. Hussein's entire stimulus package, well, ninety five percent of it, went to maintaining government payrolls, which meant that it eventually found its way into union coffers. And that was eight hundred BILLION dollars! A million, a billion, a quadrillion -- I'm feeling so VERKLEMPT!

Aridog said...

I've not researched it very deeply, but I know that most of the VA is represented by the AFGE union (there may be others in small groups)...a voluntary membership you must sign on for, and agree to dues deductions. It is NOT an automatic membership just because you enter federal service where AFGE is involved.

As a former "Fed" (eventually in management ranks) I do not recall anyone, repeat anyone having a full time job doing just union work while holding down a function position otherwise. Of course, my frame of deference was limited to DoD, so it is not comprehensive. The union reps, including the officers in a local, do part time union work at most...where I've been involved. They are usually provided an office and meeting space for union work, but that is not their sole job or activity (they have another space for funcitonal job work)...in my expereince.

It is said that 2/3rds of the VA is unionized. If so, I'm surprised...my experience shows less than 1/2 where I was. Every year the union runs a short campaign to recruit more members from civil service. It cannot be compelled.

I will look more in to this, time permitting, and get back on the subject, vis a vis the VA, which is such a huge cluster screw agency that anything may be possible.

I just react to those whose first pronouncement is that the union is at fault...nonsense, in the federal government the ever growing senior executives who set policy and establish procedure that are at fault...as I have said many times here.

Fact is, the federal government can and does organize new functional units called "High Performing Organizations" that are not unionized, may not join a union, nor have full civil service protection. Some are stand alone and others are in "regional enterprise partnerships" with defense contractors (like the web designer for the PPACA)...I can prove it but prefer not to if not subpoened for the purpose...not certain how much of that information if FOUO or higher. I'm outta-there so I no longer have a ox being gored.

That latter matter makes the civil service grade federal worker even more vulnerable to political extortion.

Aridog said...

ripic ... don't feel quite so verklempt...union member ship in the VA is AFGE and at worst reaches 66%, more likely less than 50%...because membership is not compulsory...e.g., many civil servants prefer to keep the due money in their pockets for their own use.

Aridog said...

DBQ said...

The economic damage done by the unions is uncountable.

Where membership is compulsory, I agree with you completely.

Compulsory membership is the life blood of the modern union...which as you say, in way too many instance serve no one but their own leadership and selected politicians.

I still tend to favor the skilled trades unions to the extent they sponsor apprenticeship programs. The guy or gal who plumbs your house or wires it for electricity won't come from Hah'vaaahd or Yale...just sayin' ;)

Aridog said...

Wow!...Just did a quick search, and found THIS, purported based upon Americans for Limited Government FOIA requests of the VHA.

If this is the truth...then no one, repeat NO ONE is more to blame than the senior executives of the VHA. This policy is NOT uniform in the federal government...it had to be "allowed" and very likely for political reasons, internal or external.

Rabel said...

It would be better if federal employee unions were not allowed. However, they are, and since they are there will necessarily be employees who are authorized to do "union work" on company time.

Here, for example, is the local contract between the Defense Contract Management Agency and AFGE Local 170. On page 11 you'll find the allowances for "union work" on company time.

It provides for full time work for the president of the local and 15 "union reps" whose primary job is dealing with interactions (grievances and other issues) between unionized employees and management. Those "union reps" appear to cover approximately 10,000 employees.

Based on my experience with a private company union, that looks like a relatively low level of representation. The representative positions can either be through elections or appointment by the union president.

My point is that National Review's "shock" that health care professionals do union work is unwarranted. The union exists, its representatives are selected from the workforce, so it necessarily follows that in a health care facility some of those representatives are health care professionals.

Aridog said...

Rabel ... good find.

I can only add that these "allowances" (called "entitlements" in the contract .... implying that they do not have to be omnibus allocations, but based upon circumstances) have to be agreed to by senior (as in SES+ ranks....appointees all) management. This for a union that can neither bargain for wages or benefits per se, only work rules....e.g., no contract? Who cares? In short, the quid pro quo factor is significant in such union contracts, local or national.

Rabel said...

I would gladly support a law to make federal employee unions illegal.

I have never seen a candidate run on that proposition. I might have missed it.

KCFleming said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
KCFleming said...

Not all socialisms fall apart in the same way.

One finds each culture has its own native methods of corruption that slowly degrade the work activity in question.

The US is somewhat like the UK, and I expect its failures will be manifest here as single payer takes over.

Hiding poor health outcomes (e.g. early cancer deaths, etc.) were Britain's main game, until they discovered hiding lack of access to appointments. They lied about that, just as the VA is doing.

It will be one outrage after another, until people just accept it and grumble and move on.

And then, it collapses. The collapse takes about 3 generations, but it always happens. The question is: which generation are we in? Because it's not the first gen of socialism. I thin we are 1/2 or 2/3rds the way through.

Aridog said...

Rabel said...

I would gladly support a law to make federal employee unions illegal.

You and FDR pretty much agree, then. I'm inclined that way as well, with some caveats.

My experience is that the problem issues cited for the AFGE at the VHA are management generated.

Therefore, I would happily support a law that would restrict management largess to only matters of work rules strictly with in the position description guidelines lines of OPM, and not allocations of labor, wages, & salary.

Further, I'd require that in the legislation that senior management, meaning all ranks over GS-15 be arbitrarily cut with two years of enactment by 75%. These are all appointed ranks and entirely political...and way too much power has been concentrated there when civil service grades were reduced from 18 to 15, in the 1970's, and therefore making the most senior grades beholden.

The problem arises when the entity the ranks are beholden to evolves, as it has, to the point where it is to the greater bureauucracy rather than either political party. Regretably, President Bush made it far worse by setting the DHS...an absolutley pure bureaucracy that poaches funciton from long standing successful departments, or re-creates said funciton to inordinate redundancy.

Let there be no doubt a Democrat would have done the same thing...the vast, I repeat vast majority of those advising him or her (bureaucrats all) would have demanded it. It is like a seed that grows and demands fertilzer.

I have previously cited facts and figures on senior management runaway growth in the federal government, including the explosion of flag rank military, even though our military has steadily shrunk since 1972.

Aridog said...

The flagrant abuse of manpower in federal government is the overabundance of titled positions. When you see titles like: "Assistant Deputy Assistant Under Secretary for pigeon poop rendition"...etc. , you know something is wrong.

The "Feds" have exceeded banks in appointing Vice Presidents....so to speak.

AllenS said...

Aridog said...
My experience is that the problem issues cited for the AFGE at the VHA are management generated.

I totally agree.