A group of five federal employee unions last week called on the Veterans Affairs Department to do a better job of informing employees of the rights and benefits available to them during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The American Federation of Government Employees, National Association of Government Employees, National Federation of Federal Employees, National Nurses United and the Service Employees International Union sent a letter to VA Secretary Denis McDonough and Assistant Secretary for Human Resources Gina Grosso urging the creation of a “joint COVID-19 training task force” to improve the department’s training for employees on a number of programs created to keep them safe during the pandemic.
The Veterans Affairs Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Last year, Congress passed legislation that, in part, established temporary emergency paid leave for employees who contract COVID-19 or who are caring for family members who have the virus, as well as making it so that frontline feds who test positive for COVID-19 are presumed to have gotten the virus on the job, for the purposes of workers compensation. Although the emergency paid leave provision expired last September, the Office of Personnel Management has encouraged agencies to continue to grant administrative leave to employees unable to work because of the pandemic.
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