dailycaller
Luke Rosiak
Investigative Reporter
1:57 PM 06/29/2017
[excerpt]
http://dailycaller.com/2017/06/29/flake-says-no-pay-for-va-union-leaders-who-skip-work-while-vets-wait/Veterans have waited months for medical appointments while the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) union said that it needs more employees, but 1,606 employees — including many nurses — let veterans wait while they collected a taxpayer check to work on union business instead of what they were hired to do, according to VA data obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation.
While veterans languished, union employees spent 1.1 million hours of work time for purposes that had nothing to do with the agency’s mission, according to separate data from the Government Accountability Office. Sometimes their union work consists of trying to block managers from firing fellow employees accused of serious misconduct.
https://www.gao.gov/assets/690/682250.pdfSen. Jeff Flake has had enough, and he says that union honchos shouldn’t be encouraging people to skip out on hospital work unless no veterans are waiting. On Thursday he introduced the Serve Veterans First Act of 2017 to do just that.
https://www.flake.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=A9952B3C-4ECF-4089-B614-785474A5B7A2
