Lobbying Begins on Bill to Maintain Meaningful Collective Bargaining for Veterans’ Affairs Nurses and Doctors

(National Federation of Federal Employees)

Washington, DC – Last week, NFFE began lobbying efforts in support of HR 4089.  This bill was recently introduced in the House, and would restore a meaningful scope of bargaining for Title 38 workers at the Department of Veterans’ Affairs.  The current objective is to recruit additional lawmakers as cosigners to the bill. 

Introduced by House Veterans’ Affairs Chairman Bob Filner and cosigned by Representatives Steven LaTourette (OH-14) and Tim Murphy (PA-18), the bill restores the scope of bargaining by eliminating matters the VA has no duty to bargain over according to Section 7422 of Title 38.  These 7422 exclusions include matters of professional conduct, competence, peer review, and compensation. 

Increasingly, VA management is interpreting 7422 exceptions very broadly, and refusing to bargain over virtually every significant workplace issue affecting medical professionals.  Recent court decisions are upholding VA’s broad reading of Section 7422, even when management raises it after completion of the arbitration process.  This is leading to high levels of dissatisfaction among Title 38 VA workers. 

VA medical professionals have extremely limited collective bargaining rights in comparison to their counterparts in other federal agencies, state and local government systems and the private sector. As a result, RNs, doctors and other impacted employees at the VA are experiencing increased job stress, low morale and burnout. This in turn exacerbates the VA’s recruitment and retention problems. Chronic short staffing has been shown to adversely impact the quality of care, patient safety, and workplace safety, and it leads to costly stopgap measures such as overuse of contract nurses and doctors.

“The VA is using 7422 as a cheap way of getting around bargaining on numerous critical issues,” said Randy Erwin, NFFE Legislative Director.  “We are asking Congress to step in and eliminate these senseless exemptions that are leading to much stress and dissatisfaction among VA health care providers.”

The following positions at the VA are classified as Title 38: physicians, dentists, podiatrists, optometrists, registered nurses, physician assistants, expanded-duty dental auxiliaries, and chiropractors.