PHOTO COURTESY OF THE ALTOONA MIRROR Shown is the entrance to the prosthetics department at James E. Van Zandt Medical Center.

ALTOONA — The Department of Veterans Affairs has canceled its collective bargaining agreements with labor unions representing more than 370,000 VA workers, including its agreement with the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents more than 1,000 employees at Van Zandt VA Medical Center.

The move “will make it easier for VA leaders to promote high-performing employees, hold poor performers accountable and improve benefits and services to American’s veterans,” stated the VA in announcement of the cancellation on Aug. 6.

The cancellation is in keeping with a March executive order from President Donald Trump that sought to eliminate collective bargaining agreements with unions representing workers in many federal agencies, alleging the action was needed for national security.

Initial court rulings halted the cancellations, but a recent ruling by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals OK’d an administration request to stay a lower court ruling that Trump’s executive order was made in retaliation for unions exercising their free speech rights as guaranteed by the First Amendment — helping to clear the way for the renewed cancellation effort, although lawsuits are still proceeding, according to an article in Federal News Network.

“On its face, the order does not express any retaliatory animus. Instead, it conveys the President’s determination that the excluded agencies have primary functions implicating national security and cannot be subjected to the [Federal Service Labor-Management Relations Statute] consistent with national security,” stated a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit court, according to the Federal News Network article.

The renewed effort to implement Trump’s executive order by the VA constitutes retaliation “for speaking out against the illegal, anti-worker and anti-veteran policies of the Trump administration,” AFGE President Everett Kelley stated in a news release. “The real reason (VA Secretary Doug) Collins wants AFGE out of the VA is because we have opposed the Trump administration’s plan to dismantle veteran health care through the cutting of 83,000 jobs, successfully fought against the disastrous and anti-veteran recommendations from the Asset Infrastructure Review (AIR) Commission that would have shut down several rural VA hospitals and clinics and consistently educated the American people about how private, for-profit veteran health care is more expensive and results in worse outcomes for veterans.”

The cancellation will ensure that VA staff will spend more time with veterans, as it will eliminate practices that in 2024 led to 1,900 union employees spending “more than 750,000 hours of work on taxpayer funded union time,” the VA announcement stated.

It will also free up 187,000 square feet of office and clinical space, including office equipment, that union representatives use for free, according to the VA.

And it will remove restrictions on management’s freedom to reward excellence, deal with poor performance appropriately and enact reforms, according to the VA.

The unions have repeatedly opposed significant, bipartisan reform, stated Van Zandt spokeswoman Rachael Moreland in an email.

The cancellation will enable VA facilities to “focus on treating veterans instead of hosting unions,” she wrote.

Under the Biden administration, the VA failed to address “nearly all of its most serious problems, such as benefits backlogs and rising health care wait times,” Moreland wrote.

Under the current administration, it has opened 16 new clinics; reduced wait times in four of six regions; cut backlogs; offered off-hour appointments; made it easier to access non-VA care; made it easier for family survivors to get benefits; and has processed “record numbers” of disability claims, she wrote.

VA employees represented by AFGE should call their federal representatives to urge passage of Protect America’s Workforce Act, which would “overturn Trump’s union-busting executive order,” the AFGE response stated.

Union leaders who have been turned out of their physical offices by the recent action should transition to virtual offices, based on a step-by-step guide, the AFGE response stated.

The AFGE represents 319,000 of the affected employees, by far the largest share, according to the Federal News Network article.

Those include nurses, doctors, benefits specialists, housekeepers, electricians, painters, food service workers, lawyers, dentists, pharmacists, crisis responders, mental health specialists, cemetery workers, janitors and more, according to the AFGE response.

Police, firefighters and security guards are exempt from the executive order.

They number about 4,000 in the VA, according to the VA.

In addition to canceling the AFGE contracts, the VA also canceled contracts with the National Association of Government Employees (NAGE); National Federation of Federal Employees (NFFE); National Nurses Organizing Committee/National Nurses United (NNOC/NNU); and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), according to the VA.

“Unmentioned but also exempt are eight smaller unions, which the VA admitted in April was because those groups had not recently challenged the administration or the department in court or grievance proceedings,” stated an article in Government Executive.

Van Zandt management “kicked the union off site effective close of business today,” stated AFGE local President Jenn Soult in a text Tuesday.