VA Staffing and the North Battlefield Outpatient Clinic

On April 10, 2025, AFGE Local 2328 joined Veterans for Peace 757, Indivisible, and other allies outside of the ribbon cutting ceremony for the new North Battlefield Outpatient Clinic in Chesapeake, VA. The clinic is beautiful, with plenty of parking (unlike the main Hampton facility which has had parking complaints from veterans and staff alike for many years). However, the one thing the clinic does not have is adequate staff.

The clinic is scheduled to start seeing patients on April 17. Currently, there are 9 PACTs (Patient Aligned Care Teams). The building was built to house 28. While Secretary of Veterans Affairs Doug Collins claims it is a “soft opening” “like a restaurant” the staff know the truth-the hiring freezes combined with the RIFs (Reductions In Force) will make it impossible to adequately and safely staff this facility.

When the Trump administration initiated a hiring freeze earlier this year, the Hampton VA was forced to call individuals that had been vetted, selected, and hired (but had not yet completed new employee orientation) and tell them that their job offers had been rescinded.

Later, some specific positions were placed on an “exception” list, meaning that they could still be hired. However, when the facility called to tell people their jobs were being re-offered, some, understandably, were no longer interested. After all, who wants to start a new job that has no job security?

Then, the probationary terminations began. Twelve (12) bargaining unit employees at Hampton VA received termination letters AFTER their tour of duty ended for the day, so the employees could not access the letters. Employees learned of the terminations when they came to work, and their PIV cards had been deactivated. Incompetent employees of DOGE (the Musk bros) who have infiltrated the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) were responsible for these actions. To add insult to injury, 11 out of the 12 employees were veterans themselves. Some have service-connected disabilities. One has a wife on active duty. One was 7 months pregnant. These are the people who served their country in uniform and chose to continue to serve as civilians. And no one knew this was going to happen. The employees had no advance notice of the terminations, their supervisors had no advance notice of the terminations, their hospital director had no advance notice of the terminations, Human Resources had no advance notice of the terminations, no one associated with the Hampton VA, where these employees worked, knew that they were being terminated. Nor were they in agreement with these terminations. These were terminations without cause. Musk and his followers fired these folks simply because they could.

AFGE filed, and won, a lawsuit that ordered the reinstatement of the terminated employees. Even then, the staff were not returned to work. They were placed on “administrative leave”-they were being paid to sit at home and do nothing while they were asking to come back to work. They loved their jobs. They had friends at work. They had veterans they had developed relationships with.

We took our concerns to Congress, and to the streets. We rallied and spread the word that the Trump administration was refusing to follow the judges’ orders. If the people in power no longer follow the rule of law…….what kind of country are we living in? It’s called a Dictatorship. Unfortunately, the elected Representatives were split via party lines about whether or not they cared about their fired constituents. Congressman Bobby Scott (D) took one of the employees to the State of the Union address. The only action Congresswoman Jen Kiggans took was to use taxpayer dollars to pay her staffer to come to the rallies to take pictures of her constituents and try to intimidate them out of exercising their first amendment rights.

Eventually, the public pressure won out, and 11 out of the 12 employees were returned to work. One declined; they were not interested in coming back to a job where they could be fired without notice, and without cause.

Now, the Trump administration has taken this case to the Supreme Court, hoping to get the lower court’s judgement reversed. So, these individuals who were reinstated may get fired all over again.

Then came the RIFs. As if morale was not bad enough, the President and his DOGE friends made plans to fire 83,000 VA employees. The number has changed several times since the original news was leaked. Most recently, the number is 70,000. So, VA employees are waiting to hear if their name will be on the list. We anticipate knowing more in June, but with the chaos and corruption, who knows how this will play out.

If you have read this far, you may be asking yourself-if the Hampton VA and associated Community Based Outpatient Clinics are already dangerously understaffed, how does it make sense to initiate mass firings without cause? That‘s a very good question-that you should be asking your representatives.

Secretary Collins claims the North Battlefield Outpatient Clinic will be fully staffed by January 2026. Let the countdown begin. In 9 months we will know whether or not he was speaking in good faith, or if he was lying. The truth will come out.