Texas VA employees have target on their backs

SHAME ON TEXAS!

When they should be hiring more to take care of Texas veterans, they are doing this to the ones they have? How is this keeping the promise to veterans? Is this how they plan to put the VA into profit driven private hands?

PRESS RELEASE
June 11, 2012
Hundreds to Rally in Front of Veterans Integrated Services Network (VISN) Headquarters to Protest Discriminatory Practices Against VA Employees

ARLINGTON, Texas
PRNewswire via COMTEX

Veterans and other groups say veterans care is jeopardized by downgrade of critical medical center support staff

Hundreds of Veterans Affairs workers, members of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), plan to rally in front of the VISN Headquarters, Wednesday, June 13 at 11:00 a.m. The activists, from health care facilities in more than 4 states, will gather at 2301 East Lamar Blvd., Suite 650, Arlington, Texas to protest what they call unfounded and arbitrary position downgrades of patient support assistants, medical record clerks, transportation assistants and others providing vital support services within the agency. The group says the downgrades are hurting veterans' care. Many of those protesting are themselves veterans.

"VA employees have a target on their back," said AFGE National Vice President Roy Flores and President of the largest VA Local in Dallas, Texas, Donald Burrell. "The agency has spent the past two years devastating the lives of modest wage earners who play a crucial role in supporting medical center functions within the VA."

AFGE is demanding that a moratorium be imposed on the lowering of these critical support positions. The agency has been unable to demonstrate that the lowest paid segment of the VA workforce should be the sole target of classification reviews and has yet to produce any evidence that the downgrades of VA support personnel will improve the functioning of the agency or its ability to serve veterans, according to AFGE.

"These heartless actions are a discriminatory assault on veterans and other VA employees at the bottom of the pay scale," said Burrell. "This nation's public servants and veterans deserve better."

read more here

Veterans should never be a political issue but should always be a national commitment! There is an interesting poll on the sidebar of this blog.
Who is better for veterans?
Democrats
8 (24%)
Republicans
10 (30%)
Neither one
15 (45%)
Vote on this poll
Votes so far: 33
Days left to vote: 18
So far neither party wins on this one!