The Department of Veterans Affairs is abandoning a six-year-old law meant to make it easier to discipline or fire employees for misconduct or nonperformance. What’s going on? The headline in Government Executive, a daily publication for government employees, explains simply: “VA will no longer use its marquee civil service reform law to punish employees,” and the article notes, “The Biden administration unwinds a key Trump legislative victory, citing a series of setbacks the law has endured.”
The article caught our attention because the VA Accountability and Whistleblower Protection Act of 2017 was a bipartisan legislative victory to address a longstanding problem at the VA. But the law immediately came under attack by some inside and outside of the government who wanted to maintain the status quo. The law recognized that America’s veterans deserve a Department of Veterans Affairs workforce of the highest caliber and that employees who do not perform or who deserve to be fired for some reason should be removed.
Before Congress passed this law, VA employees who couldn’t or wouldn’t provide high-quality services to veterans were difficult to fire. This reality led to a “go along, get along” attitude that fostered a poor and retaliatory work environment for good employees — and often, tragic outcomes for veterans seeking VA care. Although these employment issues have been recognized as a government-wide issue for decades, it came to a head at the VA with a scandal in Phoenix...
Washington, May 6 (IANS) India's Operation Sindoor, launched after the heinous terror attack that took place in Jammu and Kashmir's Pahalgam on April 22 last year and witnessed Pakistan-backed ter...