For scores of prospective hires at the Department of Veterans Affairs, a short email last week delivered some big news.
“We are pleased to inform you that we have been authorized with an exemption to reinstate your job offer and continue with the hiring process,” the VA wrote in an email.” We are excited at the prospect of you joining us here at VA.”
After President Donald Trump authorized a 90-day hiring freeze across the federal government last Monday, VA officials scrambled to make sense of who it could — and couldn’t — bring on board to keep providing health care for a record number of veterans.
The executive order included several exemptions, including one for veterans’ benefits.
The VA made its health care workforce exempt from the first Trump administration’s hiring freeze in 2017. But Trump’s pick to run the VA, former Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.) didn’t make an explicit assurance to lawmakers the department would grant those same carveouts this time around.
“President Trump, in this executive order, is to get an assessment on where we are with our employees. It is not to take away from anything that is currently there,” Collins said last Wednedsay. “We may not, at this point, bring in a new person tomorrow unless needed, but this is where we’re at.”
The VA, however, issued a memo last Thursday exempting more than 300,000 health care positions from a governmentwide hiring freeze.
Acting VA Secretary Todd Hunter, in a memo to department leaders, stated Veterans Health Administration positions “critical to delivering care to veterans” are exempt from the freeze, under the category of public safety.
Following the memo, many prospective VA employees told Federal News Network that the VA reinstated their job offers.
The reactions run the gamut. Some expressed relief, having spent thousands of dollars on relocating to a new city or state. Others said the experience made them skeptical about the stability of a federal job.
Still others are in limbo, waiting to hear back on whether job offers, transfers, and reauthorizations of term-appointed jobs meet the exemption criteria. The prospective hires who spoke to Federal News Network requested anonymity to share their experience without risking their newly reinstated positions.
‘I feel for all the people that are not getting lucky’
In Pennsylvania, an Army veteran who served in Iraq said his temporary job offer for a social worker position in the VA’s Health Care for Homeless Veterans program was rescinded last Wednesday, but reinstated Friday afternoon.
“A few hours ago I received an email saying they were going to move forward with the onboarding process, since social work is exempt from the freeze,” he said. “Still, I feel for all the people that are not getting lucky.”
After leaving the Army, the social worker applicant said he found a “good job that I wasn’t happy in,” and struggled with depression and PTSD. After going through therapy, he decided to get his master’s degree in social work and apply for VA jobs.
He said he left a $100,000-a-year position to pursue a career with the VA, and said he at first felt “empty-handed” when his job offer was initially rescinded. Among his motivations for the career switch, he said few of the social workers working at his nearest VA facility were combat veterans.
“There were many setbacks along the way. I finally was able to receive a direct hire for a VA social work job and I was so proud,” he said. “I was excited to bring my experience to work with other veterans who didn’t get the breaks I did.”
‘This will absolutely affect veteran care directly’
A VA cancer researcher in the Pacific Northwest, whose work includes caring for veterans with late-stage cancer, said she and other medical research staff face the possibility of “mass layoffs,” after getting three conflicting answers on their exemption status.
“This will absolutely affect veteran care directly,” she said. “I work with stage-four cancer patients. We have patients who get direct care under us. We supply medications,” she said.
The VA researcher said and most of her colleagues are term-based hires whose jobs are renewed every three to five years. “We get treated as new hires every three years,” she said.
In a meeting with her supervisor Wednesday, the VA researcher and her colleagues were told she would be let go once their terms expired. But by Thursday, they received an email that said their positions were among the more than 8,700 “general health science” positions the VA exempted from the hiring freeze.
“These series exemptions would re-initiate offers and enable NTE renewals,” a VA research and development supervisor wrote in an email shared with Federal News Network.
By the end of the day, however, the VA researcher and her team were told by leadership that their jobs were not exempt, after all, but said they would all have the chance to have their job status “reviewed” by human resources in D.C.
“That does not guarantee a renewal for hire,” she said. “We’ve also had multiple people in our department get their job offers rescinded, and from what we’ve heard that hasn’t changed.”
“It feels like we’re just sitting ducks right now, just waiting to hear what’s going to happen next. I will tell you morale is at an all-time low. Researchers at our VA especially are oftentimes full of younger folks. So we’re nowhere near our pensions or our retirement. So it’s just the morale is awful. Going into work, nobody wants to do anything anymore,” she said.
The VA researcher said her team faces the possibility of eliminating one of its research studies on metastatic cancer with an outside biotech company, because the study lead coordinator within the VA will reach the end of her term in March.
“It’s going to be hard for all of us to try to cover the amount of work that needs to be done,” she said.
The VA researcher said several VA medical centers across the country, including hers, are “struggling to staff researchers,” because all of their hires in the pipeline had their job offers rescinded.
“We are serving veterans, and a lot of veterans voted for this administration and expect the best care out of this administration, which is valid. That is what they should be expecting. I mean, they devoted their life to protect us,” the VA researcher said.
‘She is moving on’
A mother told Federal News Network that a VA medical center in Florida hired her daughter, a third-year family medicine resident who graduates this summer. However, she said her daughter’s job offer was rescinded last week.
“She had contacted them earlier in the week and was told that her job offer was on hold. What is so confusing is that some VA systems seem to be telling residents that the residency programs and medical student rotations at the VA will be cut altogether. Other systems are saying they are exempt,” she said.
The mother told Federal News Network on Monday that her daughter’s job offer has not been reinstated, and that “she is going to move on,” and apply to hospital jobs outside the VA.
‘I’ve waited months for this job’
A psychologist waiting to start her new VA job feared “financial disaster” when her final job offer was rescinded last week. She said the VA hired her for a staff psychologist position last October, and was given Dec.30 as an estimated start date.
Her start date, however, got pushed back, and was told by hiring officials to be patient and wait for the VA to complete onboarding steps. While waiting on the VA, the psychologist said she signed up for unemployment benefits and maxed out her credit cards to pay her bills.
“I’ve waited months for this job. I could have done something else. And it’s financially very, very difficult. I don’t have a lot of money, but I wanted to work for the VA. That’s what I wanted to do since I started training to be a nurse. The opportunity to work for the VA was just really a dream come true for me. I’ve sacrificed a lot to make this happen,” she said.
The psychologist completed much of her medical training at VHA. The VA is the largest provider of psychology training in psychology in the U.S. — with internships at 106 locations and 260 fellowship positions funded each year.
Congress in 2018 passed the MISSION Act, which expanded veterans’ access to non-VA health care options if they lived far away from the nearest VA medical facility. The psychologist, however, said VA psychologists are trained on veterans’ specific needs.
“I think it’s a disservice to veterans to send them all out to the community when we have mental health care that is tailored towards them, and really provides them what they need specifically,” she said. “If you’re a VA provider, there’s a lot of guidance for you on screening veterans for suicide and addressing certain things. Community providers have none of that. They don’t have the same interface with the Veterans Crisis Line that the VA does.
The psychologist told Federal News Network her job offer was reinstated on Friday — and that she accepted the position.
‘I’ll just have to do some soul-searching’
A second psychologist with a tentative job offer for a VA position said their offer was also rescinded and reinstated last week. While they completed their onboarding tasks, the prospective hire, who identifies as queer and nonbinary, said the back-and-forth offers, as well as the Trump’s executive order addressing “gender ideology extremism” made them “pretty hesitant” to accept the job offer, which would require relocating to another state.
“I’ll just have to do some soul-searching,” they said.
‘An unintended consequence of how quickly everything was implemented’
A VA ophthalmologist said his transfer from Virginia to Washington State was initially held up by the hiring freeze, but has now been reapproved.
“The way that they phrased it was basically that they were told just to cancel everything and then maybe there would be exceptions figured out and they’ll send us information over the coming weeks,” he said.
The VA ophthalmologist said his new VA medical center in Washington has enough optometrists on staff, but only one ophthalmologist who can perform cataract surgeries.
“I was excited to the ground running and help them out with that backlog.”
The Office of Personnel Management, in guidance following the executive order, gave agencies until 5 pm on Jan. 21 to rescind job offers that didn’t meet the criteria for exemptions.
“I don’t think it gave them enough time to figure out who might potentially be exempted,” the VA ophthalmologist said. “I don’t think anyone anywhere along the chain, as high up as you go, probably wanted this. It might’ve just been an unintended consequence of how quickly everything was implemented.”
The VA ophthalmologist said his transfer has been clear to proceed, but was told an “option for telework if needed” if needed has been rescinded from the original job offer.
“I’d have never done telework anyway, but they are removing that from all offers now,” he said.
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