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VA Job Cut Threat:Should Labor and Vets Declare Victory or Keep Up the Fight?

By Suzanne Gordon and Steve Early

One of us spent many years as a labor representative in the telecom industry, which has steadily downsized its unionized workforce for the past forty years. This process has been regularly punctuated by corporate headquarters' announcements of big pending "reductions in force" (RIF).

When that alarm bell rings, members of the Communications Workers of America (CWA) and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) have historically been very effective at mobilizing against the latest threatened job cuts.

Through workplace mobilization, outreach to labor, community, and political allies, and direct negotiations with Verizon and AT&T, these unions have often been able to modify a headcount reduction plan with the help of early retirement incentives, thereby averting actual layoffs.

Should this outcome be cause for rank-and-file celebration or serve as another reminder that the next job security threat is not just around the corner but an integral part of a management's long-term restructuring plan?

That was the question facing Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) employees and their organizational allies after both got some temporary good news from VA Secretary Doug Collins in July. Four months earlier, a leaked memo from Collins's chief of staff revealed that the Trump Administration wanted to shed 83,000 VA workers by the end of 2025.

This revelation triggered grassroots protests around the country—by veterans' organizations, VA union members, their patients, families, and political allies. In response, Secretary Collins spent many weeks stonewalling his critics on Capitol Hill and elsewhere.

Meanwhile, he presided over a chaotic series of VA contract cancellations demanded by President Trump's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which produced few worthwhile cost savings. And Collins scornfully dismissed the claim that DOGE-driven job cuts might have a negative impact on nine million VA patients.

Headed in The Right Direction?

In a July 7 press release, the former Congressman from Georgia suddenly took a different stance. Collins announced that a 15% reduction in his agency's workforce was no longer necessary. 17,000 VA employees had already left by then, and another 13,000 were expected to do so by September as a result of "normal attrition" or the lure of early retirement or severance payments.

"A departmentwide RIF is off the table," Collins said. "As a result of our efforts, VA is headed in the right direction—both in terms of staff levels and customer service."

A far better indicator of where the VA is headed can be found in Collins' more consistent—but equally misleading—messaging about "making it even easier for veterans to get their health care when and where it's most convenient for them."

In the VA Secretary's view, this means allowing VA patients to make an unfettered choice between their highly qualified VA caregivers and 1.7 million private-sector providers, whose care is often more costly, less effective, and less accessible, particularly in rural areas. "A departmentwide RIF is off the table," Collins said. "As a result of our efforts, VA is headed in the right direction—both in terms of staff levels and customer service."

Collins' budgetary priorities for FY 2026 clearly favor privatization. He wants a 50 percent increase in discretionary spending on outsourced care (which already totals $30 billion a year) and an unprecedented 17 percent reduction in such spending on VA direct care. This ongoing defunding of in-house care will eventually result in more VA staff reductions and facility closings of the sort planned by the Biden Administration but blocked by grassroots protests and bipartisan opposition on the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee.

After Biden's proposed "Asset and Infrastructure Review Commission" was scrapped three years ago, his VA Secretary, Denis McDonough, failed to strengthen VA direct care financing by curbing costly and unnecessary patient referrals to private doctors and hospitals. So, under the second Trump Administration, Collins just picked up where his corporate Democrat predecessor left off.

A Divided Reaction

Nevertheless, some advocates for veterans and their caregivers were quick to give Collins a pat on the back for his July 7 press release. Others issued stronger warnings that the fight to save the VA is far from over because large-scale outsourcing is accelerating under Trump.

While noting that "30,000 job cuts, even through attrition, still risks degrading services," American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) President Everett Kelley called this lesser blow "a major victory." He urged other federal department heads "to follow Secretary Collin's lead" and abandon their own DOGE-driven RIF plans.

Kelley also pledged that, "if the administration continues down the path of privatization, mass lay-offs, and unlawful reorganizations, they will hear from us again"—as if there might not be any need for such ongoing membership mobilization?

The million-member Disabled American Veterans (DAV) declared itself to be "cautiously optimistic" about Collins's action. The Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA) hailed it as "a notable and encouraging departure from the previously discussed, much larger cuts." In their statements, unlike AFGE's, neither group mentioned the continuing privatization threat which stems from legislation—the VA MISSION Act—which they and other veterans service organizations helped Trump enact in 2018.

Other veterans' groups, like Common Defense and VoteVets, were far more critical. Common Defense national organizer Joanna Sweatt, a Marine veteran, "warned that Trump's attacks on VA healthcare haven't stopped." On behalf of VoteVets, retired Army Major General Paul Eaton predicted, accurately, that the White House still plans to "demonize, downsize, and privatize VA care."

As Robert Anderson, a Veterans For Peace member and VA patient in New Mexico, points out, "the decade-long diversion of funds from the VA for privatization continues at break neck speed… This is the real threat. As a result of cutbacks and shortages, I hear some vets complaining that the VA can't do anything right. And proving that to be true has always been the goal of the Republican jihad against 'government-run' healthcare."

Russell Lemle, former chief psychologist for the San Francisco VA Healthcare System and co-founder of the Veterans Healthcare Policy Institute, praised the grassroots organizing and lobbying efforts that resulted in fewer job cuts this year. "But the focus on the number 83,000 was always problematic," he points out. "It set the stage for Collins to scale back his plans and, in the process, appear more reasonable and flexible than he actually is."

A Roller Coaster Ride

A VA local union activist, who wished to remain anonymous to avoid management retaliation, agreed that "announcing big cuts and then implementing smaller ones results in everyone breathing a sigh of relief when we can't afford to let our guard down."

According to Lemle, staff reductions through steady attrition will still have a negative impact on the nation's largest public healthcare system. "When backfilling a vacated position is slowed to a crawl or indefinitely suspended or, worse yet, a position gets removed from the organizational chart, you end up not having enough staff to serve veterans needs which is a recipe for outsourcing more care to the private sector."

The roller coaster ride that VA workers have been on since Trump returned to office has left many worried not just about their short-term job security. Tens of thousands of talented, skilled, and committed healthcare professionals and support staffers now wonder whether they have any future at the agency. "The Administration's message is look for a job elsewhere," one former VA medical center director told us.

The organizational challenge facing VA defenders now is how to maintain morale in their own ranks, while building on recent protest activity in Washington and around the country that attracted many veterans previously unengaged in this struggle.

The longstanding Republican goal of restructuring veterans' healthcare delivery, via ever-expanding privatization, has not been abandoned. And no one is better positioned to resist that continuing Trump administration threat than eighteen million veterans, their families, and the federal workers still able to support them.

Steve Early and Suzanne Gordon are longtime labor and healthcare reform activists who co-authored a book called Our Veterans: Winners, Losers, Friends, and Enemies on the New Terrain of Veterans Affairs (Duke University Press). They can be reached at Lsupport@aol.com.