President Donald Trump signed an executive order at the end of March taking away most federal workers’ right to collective bargaining.¹ Earlier this month, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) became the first agency to actually eliminate its unions.² More than 370,000 employees at the VA were covered by union contracts.³ This included IAM members of the National Federation of Federal Employees (NFFE).

According to Pew polling, a quarter of VA employees are veterans themselves. This means the VA has taken away unions from more than 90,000 veterans. That’s 1 in 10 veterans employed by the federal government.⁴

The VA attempted to justify stripping veterans at the agency of the same rights as other workers. They claimed staff will be able to spend more time with veterans if they aren’t focused on union business. “In 2024 alone, over 1,900 VA bargaining-unit employees spent more than 750,000 hours of work on taxpayer funded union time,” the VA complained. “Those hours can now be used to serve Veterans instead of union bosses.”⁵ This is paternalistic and untrue. Hours spent on union business are just a drop in a big, bureaucratic bucket. The VA has not taken any other steps to cut down on paperwork.

In fact, the VA wants to add more bureaucracy for veterans to navigate. The VA cited the IAM’s opposition to the MISSION Act as one example of the “fight against the best interests of Veterans.”⁶ The IAM opposed the MISSION Act because it would have privatized broad swaths of the VA healthcare system.⁷ The VA claims the MISSION Act would make it easier for veterans to get healthcare.⁸ Anyone who has navigated the private health sector knows this is an absurd notion. According to the unions opposing the MISSION Act:

[The MISSION Act] does nothing to help the VA fulfill its mission to veterans. The underlying bill does nothing to help build up internal capacity at the VA and assures that once care and services leave the VA they will not return. The bill outsources primary care to the private sector, authorizes the outsourcing of entire service lines, and fails to address the chronic and prolonged issue of understaffing that is currently plaguing the VA.⁹

In other words, the MISSION Act prioritizes profits over veterans. VA Secretary Doug Collins thinks this is a great idea. He claims it’s actually unions like the IAM that “fight against the best interests of Veterans while protecting and rewarding bad workers.”¹⁰

This is a boldfaced lie. Liz Harkins of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) said:

We are the boots on the ground when it comes to veterans’ care. And I do not believe that the upper management (and) administration have the first-hand experience of what we have when it comes to our veterans’ care and how we advocate for them and we fight for them. And now we risk the retaliation for fighting for them.¹¹

Collins’ statement is inconsistent with the VA’s own recognition of the IAM as a Veterans Service Organization (VSO). In February, the IAM became the first and only labor union to be recognized as a VSO for its tireless support of veterans. From an IAM news release:

This official recognition by the VA is not just a title. It signifies that the IAM has met stringent requirements and is now able to expand its representation of veterans in a more formal capacity. This includes assisting with claims through more representatives, advocating for benefits, pushing for legislative changes, and providing guidance through the often-complex VA system. It demonstrates the organization’s strong commitment to understanding and meeting the needs of veterans and their families.

The IAM has one of the highest percentages of military Veterans in the entire labor movement. In less than three years, the IAM Veterans Services Program has secured over $3 million in disability payments and over $300,000 a month in compensation increases for about 300 IAM Veterans.¹²

While our boots were on the ground, the VA was busy shoving theirs up our ass. The decision to terminate unions at the VA will hurt far more than the 90,000 veterans who work there. Veterans rely on VA services and VA unions like IAM-affiliated NFFE. After all, who knows what veterans need better than the veterans themselves?

1. White House, “Exclusions from Federal Labor-Management Relations Programs,” news release, March 27, 2025. ↩︎
2. Robert Evans et al, reporting by Mia Wong, It Could Happen Here, podcast audio, August 14, 2025, 46:12. ↩︎
3. Jared Serbu, “VA says it’s ended most collective bargaining agreements,” Federal News Network, August 6, 2025, accessed August 19, 2025. ↩︎
4. Drew DeSilver, “What we know about veterans who work for the federal government,” Pew Research Center, April 10, 2025. ↩︎
5. VA, “VA terminates union contracts for most bargaining-unit employees,” news release, August 6, 2025. ↩︎
6. Ibid. ↩︎
7. IAM, “Tell Your Senators to Vote ‘No’ on Gutting the VA,” news release, May 18, 2018. ↩︎
8. VA, “VA terminates union contracts for most bargaining-unit employees,” news release, August 6, 2025. ↩︎
9. AFL-CIO et al to Senators, May 22, 2018. ↩︎
10. Quoted in VA, “VA terminates union contracts for most bargaining-unit employees,” news release, August 6, 2025. ↩︎
11. Quoted in Kevin Miller, “Union official says elimination of collective bargaining at VA will harm workers and veterans,” Maine Public, August 8, 2025. ↩︎
12. IAM, “IAM Reaches Historic Milestone for Veterans, Becomes First Labor Union Recognized as VSO, news release, February 12, 2025. ↩︎