VA Whistleblowers Beware: Tweeting Under Trump is No Two-Way Street

[babylonsister]

http://prospect.org/article/va-whistleblowers-beware-tweeting-under-trump-no-two-way-street

VA Whistleblowers Beware: Tweeting Under Trump is No Two-Way Street`
Suzanne Gordon
March 2, 2017

A GOP bid to muzzle federal workers at the Veterans Health Administration will directly harm patients.


In 2014, when a Veterans Health Administration doctor in Phoenix revealed that some VHA administrators had falsified data on wait times for patient appointments, congressional Republicans applauded his whistleblowing on behalf of veterans’ health care.

Joined by many Democrats and, later, the bipartisan VA Commission on Care, Republicans said they supported a workplace culture that encourages federal employees to report agency problems, and speak up about misconduct by management.

Now, however, President Trump and his GOP allies are singing a different tune. If their current efforts to muzzle employees who may disagree with VHA policies or practices succeed, both the quality of VHA care and the safety of its patients will suffer. That’s because concerned caregivers will be afraid to criticize deficiencies when they spot them.

As The Washington Examiner reported on February 23, the Trump administration wants to prohibit VA staff members from voicing online criticism even when they’re not at work. The VA’s own Office of General Counsel supported the free speech rights of employees who use social media during their off-duty hours. But in the article, White House spokesman Sean Spicer insisted that all federal employees must toe the administration line.

Pete Hegseth, a Trump supporter and former CEO of Concerned Veterans for America, a conservative nonprofit funded in part by the Koch brothers, was quoted in the article applauding this hardline stance. According to Hegseth, the various expressions of federal employee dissent witnessed since Trump’s inauguration just demonstrate “the depth of the swamp” in Washington, D.C., and “the extent to which the civil service bureaucrats are entrenched in siding with the unions.” Hegseth, like many advocates of VHA privatization, thus used the issue to attack the power of federal employee unions.

Over the past year, GOP members of the House Veterans Affairs Committee have taken direct aim at VHA staff and their unions, most notably the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE). The Republicans would like to strip AFGE and other union-represented VHA employees of due process protections and make them what’s known as “employees at will.” That means they would be subject to dismissal without just cause, or any opportunity to rebut management allegations against them in any kind of fair hearing.

snip//

This clear connection between employee speech and patient safety deserves more attention from veterans’ service organizations and Democrats on Capitol Hill. Veteran advocates must wake up to and spotlight the value of unions, and the due process rights of VHA employees. If Republicans in Washington succeed in muzzling the voices of federal employees and undermining their collective bargaining rights, VHA patients will be the ones who suffer.