Restoring Collective Bargaining Rights to VA Health Care Professionals
Sen. (D-W.Va.), a member of the Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, and (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, reached out to right a serious wrong when they recently introduced crucial legislation (S. 362 and H.R. 949) to restore the collective bargaining rights of VA health care professionals, including registered nurses.
RNs Working Together followed up the bill introduction with a briefing on the Hill in March 2009.
Download the legislative issue brief .
Speakers at the briefing included J. David Cox, RN, secretary-treasurer of the ; Jane Nygaard, RN, 8th district national vice president of ; Ann Converso, RN, president of the ; , a professor at and Rick Weidman, director of government relations, .
The shortage.
For the past several years, health care professionals have been scrambling to meet soaring patient care demands from two wars and an aging population. Meanwhile, the professionals who provide the hands-on care to our veterans have seen their ability to have an effective voice in the workplace eroded by the Bush administration, intensifying the shortage in VA hospitals. The legislation sponsored by Rockefeller and Filner aims to reverse that trend.
Says J. David Cox, a registered nurse and the national secretary-treasurer of the federal government union, :
This critical legislation will go a along way to ensure that the VA is a model employer who can compete for the best nurses and other health care professionals to care for our veterans.
The change will come as a welcome relief to the health care professionals—including registered nurses, physicians, physician assistants, dentists, podiatrists, optometrists and expanded duty dental assistants—who were singled out by the Bush administration and the for more limited bargaining rights.
Ann Converso, RN, president of the , puts it this way:
These important bills restore to nurses and other VA health care workers the ability to forcefully advocate for our patients with the protection of our union and the collective bargaining process behind us.
The history.
In 1991, Congress enacted 38 USC Section 7422 to provide VA registered nurses with the same collective bargaining rights as other federal employees. Congress carved out some exceptions—most importantly, excluding the right to bargain collectively over disputes related to “direct patient care.” While the legislative history makes clear that Congress viewed “direct patient care” narrowly to mean medical procedures, not issues such as nurse compressed work schedules, the Bush administration used this exclusion as a wedge to separate health care workers from their rights.
Cox notes that:
Congress outlined its intent to afford VA employees the same collective bargaining rights as other federal employees, but unfortunately for the VA workforce and the veterans they care for, the VA’s current human resources policy has acted contrary to that intent.
The new legislation would amend Section 7422 and put an end to years of unequal rights for front-line VA health care professionals appointed under Title 38.
Collective bargaining and innovation.
It’s important to restore these health care professionals’ rights, not only because union nurses are protected and fearless patient advocates—but also because collective bargaining allows them to impact the implementation of new technology.
When it comes to putting in new medical records systems, including BCMA (bar code medication administration), the VA’s union nurses used collective bargaining to negotiate the terms of the implementation, making it safer for both patients and professionals.
Jane Nygaard, RN, 8th district national vice president of AFGE explains:
The Department of Veterans Affairs wanted to roll out this initiative nationwide to over 170 facilities. They realized this was a huge undertaking and that their labor partners were an integral part of a successful rollout. The goal of the union was to minimize impact on the staff and to ensure that patient care was not negatively impacted during the rollout or after the implementation.
Realizing that initially this would slow the nurses down, which would affect our ability to care for our patients, we negotiated a staffing adjustment to accommodate the increase in workload during the implementation. We also negotiated rolling out the program in stages to ensure that it went smoothly. Being in a union gave front line nurses a seat at the table to collaborate with the VA. I’m proud to say that BCMA was rolled out nationwide with very few problems.
Michael Wiedman, director of government relations at the Vietnam Veteran’s of America also attended the briefing to defend the value of collective bargaining for health care professionals. The VVA was testified in a hearing before the Senate Committee on Veteran’s Affairs in May 2008 to support the bill, along with the Paralyzed Veteran’s of America and the Disabled American Veterans.
Our military veterans deserve a health care workforce that has a voice in their working conditions and in the delivery of care. And taxpayers deserve to have the precious health care dollars appropriated for the VA go to health care, rather than wasteful and harmful efforts that undermine the rights that workers need and deserve.
It’s time for policies that support our nurses and our veterans. That’s why, as the largest organization of working registered nurses in the United States, applauds Rep. Filner and Sen. Rockefeller for their effort to restore collective bargaining rights to these workers.
When VA nurses have a meaningful voice in their workplace, and the full opportunity to advocate for their patients, then we’ll know for sure that our nation’s veterans are getting the safe, quality care that every patient deserves.
