VA employees are ‘fearful, paranoid, demoralized' as officials share few specifics to axe 83,000 employees

Independent

7 days ago

Employees at the Department of Veterans Affairs are 'fearful, paranoid, and demoralized' as plans loom to downsize the agency by cutting around 83,000 jobs but details remain vague, according to a report.
Proposals to shrink the workforce by 15 percent were first reported in March after a department memo set out an objective to cut enough employees to return to 2019 staffing levels of just under 400,000. The move would require terminating tens of thousands of employees.
VA Secretary Douglas A. Collins was grilled about the proposed cuts by the Senate Committee on Veterans ' Affairs earlier this month, but claimed the 80,000 target was merely a 'goal to look at our restructuring.'
Since then, however, morale has been 'plummeting' at the department as staff anxiously wait to hear more about the plans, The Washington Post reports.
'The veterans now check in and ask us how we are doing,' a social worker at a hospital in the Great Lakes region told the newspaper. 'They see the news and are very aware of the circumstances and fearful of losing VA support that they depend on.'
Another contractor at a VA medical center in Palo Alto, California, said employees are currently 'fearful, paranoid, demoralized.'
One veteran staffer said in a written submission seen by the outlet that 'Iraq felt safer than being a VA employee currently does.' Around a quarter of employees at the VA are veterans. 'My leadership in Iraq cared about me as a human and didn't just see me as a number,' the VA communications worker said.
Doctors, nurses and claims processors would not be targeted in the cuts, VA spokesperson Peter Kasperowicz told The Independent, but said the department would 'reduce administrators, advisors, and middle manager posts to eliminate duplicative, unnecessary layers of management and bureaucracy.'
Thousands of jobs at hospitals and clinics would still be under threat from future cuts, according to The Post, which Kasperowicz said was 'inaccurate' because 'no decisions have been made with respect to staff reductions.'
Kasperowicz also sought to lay the blame at the door of the previous administration.
'During the Biden Administration, VA failed to address nearly all of its most serious problems, such as benefits backlogs, rising health-care wait times and major issues with survivor benefits,' Kasperowicz said in a statement to The Independent.
Kasperowicz disputed claims of low morale and accused the The Post and 'other biased media outlets' of writing 'dishonest hit pieces' about the Trump administration's efforts to 'fix' the VA.
Veterans groups are rallying against the cuts in the coming weeks. The Unite For Veterans rally is slated for June 6, the D-Day anniversary, at Washington, D.C.'s National Mall to 'defend the benefits, jobs, healthcare and essential VA services under attack.'
The progressive VoteVets group spoke out about the cuts on Memorial Day. 'Gutting VA will result in delayed appointments and substandard care, leading directly to more veteran deaths,' Kayla Williams, Iraq Veteran and senior policy advisor at VoteVets, said.
'In fact, as reports and internal documents now prove, Elon Musk's wrecking ball is causing systems to fail, putting veterans at risk.'
Kasperowicz added that the department has 'already made significant progress' in 'fulfilling VA's mission of serving Veterans' by reducing the department's disability claims backlog by 25 percent since Trump entered office, ending DEI at the department, and processing 'record numbers of disability claims' for the fiscal year 2025.