Over the last several months, NAGE has been lobbying Congress to adopt a bill (HR 4089) that would restore a meaningful scope of bargaining for Title 38 workers at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). Just this week, Senator John Rockefeller (D-WV) introduced a companion bill in the Senate (S 2824). The bill has three original co-sponsors, Senators Sharrod Brown (D-OH), Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), and Jim Webb (D-VA).

The House version of the bill continues to pick up support. Introduced by House Veterans’ Affairs Chairman Bob Filner (D-CA), the bill has been cosigned by 18 lawmakers. This bipartisan bill restores the scope of bargaining by eliminating matters the VA is not required to bargain over according to Section 7422 of Title 38. These 7422 exclusions include matters of professional conduct, competence, peer review, and compensation.

"We are happy to see action on the Senate side," said National President David J. Holway. "We have done a good job of getting the House educated about this important bill. Now that we have Senate version, we can turn up our efforts over there and start building greater support for the bill. Ultimately, we will need support from both bodies."

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.