The Department of Veteran Affairs has abandoned plans manifested in one Memorandum To close thousands of personnel in August earlier this year, a news release from the department was indicated on Monday.
The VA announced that currently by the end of this financial year in September, there is a speed of reduced their employees by about 30,000 employees, which “the need for large-scale cut-in-form was abolished,” or RIF.
The department has basically planned to reduce its employees to 2019 levels, or just less than 400,000, according to a memorandum received by CBS News in March. The VA said in its release that it “had around 484,000 employees on January 1, 2025” – meaning that initial plans would require VA to cut 80,000 jobs.
In a statement involved in the release, the Secretary of the Veteran Affairs Doug Collins said that as a result of the “overall” department-wide review, VA “is led in the right direction-the level of employees and customer service. In the context of customer service. A department-abusive RIF is out of the RIF table, but this does not mean that we are improving VA.”
The VA admitted in the release that the agency “was considering a department-wide RIF to reduce the level of employees by 15%,” but said that “the deficiency of employees through freeze, deferred resignation, retirement and general attraction have ended the requirement of that RIF.”
A VA spokesperson said in a statement on Monday that “he conducts the overall review of the department for about four months to see if there is a need to change.” The department claimed that in recent months, VA has improved services for giants, “a drastic decline in the number of veterans waiting for disability benefits, increasing claims processing productivity, and extraordinary progress about our electronic health record modernization.”
The spokesperson stated that the original number of 80,000 employees was cut, “Employees out of the box to come up with a new and better way to serve the veterans,” and “The main goals are making the best possible experiences and results for all the veterans and their families.
Under the Biden administration, VA hired tens of thousands of workers, so that they can help them in administration Treaty actOne who addresses the toxic exposure, suffering the giants while serving the army. The Trump administration initially focused on cutting the level of employees in pre-biden administration levels.
The Trump administration tried to hire a broad work on several government jobs earlier this year, which was part of a push to cut the size of the federal workforce. Va Gave some roles exempted From that freeze, including several health care jobs in the agency’s hospital network. The administration also introduced a voluntary “Decitable resignation“The deal that allowed thousands of federal workers to quit their jobs in early February and pay by September.
Connecticut’s Democratic Sen Richard Blutenal noted the reversal of the planned mass trimming in VA and blamed the work atmosphere in the department.
The top Democrat of the Criminals’ Committee on the case of the case of the Senate veterans said in a statement, “This announcement makes the employees bleeding across the board, as this administration and the toxic work environment created by the slash and waste policies of the Dogi,” the top Democrat of the Criminal Affairs Committee said in a statement. “This is not ‘natural’, it is not strategic, and it will essentially affect the care and benefits of the veterans – no matter that the blanket is assured that the VA secretary hides behind.”
BlueMemental stated that the VA workforce usually expands “about 10,000 in a specific year”, and its statement was losing 30,000 this year, which means that VA “still stands to lose more thousands of more employees than before.” He complained that the administration “repeatedly refused to share any additional information about the scheme to cut 83,000 VA employees and which posts would be targeted.”
Nicole Killian contributed to this report.
