What a union president once called the ‘the very best union contract in the entire federal government’ is no more.
Good news from the Department of Veterans Affairs: What a union president once called the “the very best union contract in the entire federal government” is no more.
The department announced yesterday that it had terminated the collective bargaining agreements for most of its employees, pursuant to President Trump’s executive order excluding many agencies from the Civil Service Reform Act’s provisions that allow collective bargaining. About four-fifths of the VA’s workforce was unionized.
One of the terminated contracts was with the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE). When the agreement was made in 2023, during Biden’s presidency, AFGE president Everett Kelley was patting himself on the back for “negotiating” what he called the best contract in the federal government. “Negotiating” is in scare quotes because the other side of the negotiation, the Biden administration, supported the AFGE and gave it what it wanted.
That’s the fundamental problem with public sector collective bargaining, and it’s why even people who staunchly support unions in the private sector, such as Franklin Roosevelt, can oppose them in government. The only constraint on contract demands is whether the politicians will give the union what it wants. They are spending other people’s money, aren’t subject to profit-loss signals, and often value the political alliance with the union over the concerns of the general public.
That comes at a great cost for the VA, which has the vital task of serving the veterans to whom the government owes a lot. Even though the veteran population has been declining since 2001, as the massive World War II generation has died, the VA’s workforce has more than doubled since 2001, and its budget has more than sextupled.
Former Secretary of Veterans Affairs Denis McDonough was bragging about that workforce growth in 2023. Now, Secretary Doug Collins is being more levelheaded about the bad influence of unions. “Too often, unions that represent VA employees fight against the best interests of Veterans while protecting and rewarding bad workers,” he said. “We’re making sure VA resources and employees are singularly focused on the job we were sent here to do: providing top-notch care and service to those who wore the uniform.”
The department put out some startling numbers on how much time and resources were being consumed by unions. “Union time” is a practice, which the Trump administration is seeking to clamp down on, whereby union representatives are paid by taxpayers for union duties. The VA said that in 2024, more than 1,900 employees spent a total of 750,000 hours on union time. “With no collective bargaining obligations, those hours can now be used to serve Veterans instead of union bosses,” the department said.
Over 187,000 square feet of VA office space was devoted to unions. Union representatives use that space free of charge to conduct union business that has nothing to do with veterans’ care.
The AFGE also worked with the Biden administration to reinstate employees who were fired for misconduct during Trump’s first term. Good employees don’t need a union to defend them from misconduct allegations. Government unions work to make sure that bad employees stay in public service, working against the public.
Trump’s order excluded law enforcement and security workers, and the VA will keep its relatively few labor agreements with those employees it has. This is common for Republicans, because law enforcement and security unions often support Republican politicians. It would be better to remove all public sector collective bargaining, as all of it is ultimately done against the public.
The VA labor contracts that were terminated are a step in the right direction. Executive branch employees report to the president of the United States, not to the president of the AFGE or any other union. And veterans deserve better than to have the department that is supposed to care for them used as a union jobs program.