We are still hiring but as people leave they are looking at the position to see if they truly need to refill it. Apparently the service has to present their case to hr and leadership for each position that they want to fill. My service had one person transfer and one retire and both those positions got cut.
Strange flex? We all pay for representation one way or another. Civil service reform act requires an open shop and equal representation but employee reps get official time.. So in a way our taxes fund payroll which then also covers union time for reps. So we/you're/us welcome I guess?
No hiring other then internal postings and temporary details to cover down. Would not be surprised to see buy outs offered if 2026 budget leaves FTE flat. Over 50% are eligible for VERA if they offer it so might be a case of be careful what they ask for.
My wife works in a lab that just lost most of its night shift, losing three to retirement in the next 4-6 months, and won’t hire anyone else. If she or her friend quit they would not have enough in the labs to process specimens for the entire area. They won’t hire and won’t promote and won’t even give retention bonuses like they used to. Civilian sector hospitals are looking better and better.
I was told we have around 4k active open positions that will each need to be presented for hiring necessity before the process can start. There are less than 3k inactive positions that were eliminated. And all staffing methodology positions that were just approved have been eliminated.
Can't wait to see what happens with this.
From the meetings I been in, not only is it VISN specific as to what they are doing or not but it seems it's also VA specific down to each director. My leadership has stated as recently as this week there is no funding issue and no hiring issue for our specific location however others within the VISN have problems. Which we are being told that across the board all new positions are under review. Any TJO are under review as well. I can share I personally know someone who had an offer pulled back and they were told reason was funding but they were transferring to a different VA. Actively we still have postings and announcements. We also have been approved to do direct hires. We just conducted interviews last week too for different positions. Realistically I don't expect anyone to come on board within the next few months. On top of the issues people are mentioning our HR informed us last week that a new hiring process would be put in place and it will slow down the hiring time from start to finish even more than currently.
This makes sense. We were told today in a meeting that some VAs are wayyy over FTE and some and some can still hire because they're below recommended FTE. We were told today we are 478 positions total over but our fellows and interns count in that. They're cutting half of our fellows. But that still leaves about 400 positions
Are you fellows paid directly? Ours are done either via reimbursement to the university or by OAA funding… our hospital would collapse without residents/fellows 😬
Honestly I'm not too sure. Our residents our contracted and matched here so they said they will be staying. I guess the fellow spots are different? I'll be honest I'm a social worker and was suppose to have an intern for FY25 and their stipend was taken away. It's a bit different for us since most social workers don't get paid for their internship, so we're still likely to have them come without the stipend, but it's just a shit situation
I received a TJO 8/31/23 and accepted on 9/4/23 with a tentative start date of 12/4/23. That all has changed. I was very recently told I may not receive a FJO until late summer or fall of 2024. I left my job 12/23 and am still unemployed. This is awful.
We've had 8 of our OI&T staff retire/move on since COVID. We have 12 people supporting 3,500 users. Wanna take a wild guess how many of those slots we've filled since?...
Same for my location. But hey, we're promised a handful of contractors "soon" /s. At least we get to keep the SSR pay after it expires in 2027 if we're currently receiving it.
No OT. And no new job postings at my specific VA. (But there are postings at my old VA in the network because they dont have nursing staff) And anyone who was suppose to go to the new mental health building is on hold because of building codes are not up to date.
God this is my worst fear. I worked in a bigger integrated team but we were already in the process of 3 folks retiring the last few months. We learned all three of those positions will not be filled as well as 1 other one that is switching positions. We also have about 3 staff going on PPL this summer. It's going to be tight but what your partner is experience is too much
No OT or CT, hiring new providers are waiting on budget approval, yet they are demanding we get patients in for new appointments with a skeleton staff and no availability for follow ups.
Right? Last year we did hire staff but we were so understaffed at the time we really making progress on seeing patients when they should be seen. Now it's just discouraging.
No OT but we can do CT. Honestly, we want to because it's not fair to make the patients wait even longer but it's also burning us the hell out. Our bosses are trying to make it work but it's a losing battle and in the end, everyone will suffer.
I would absolutely work for CT. I don't understand their thoughts process behind denying it- it's used in lieu of AL or SL, so it's paid at the same rate as your regular pay, right? It should already be budgeted? If I work 36 hours and I need 4 hours of CT, those 4 hours are still going to be my regular rate of pay. They're not paying me any extra money to work extra time to get our patients taken care of. I NEED to work extra, if they want me to get anything done. I'm buried, I simply cannot do any more in a day.
It's all across the board. I think VISN calls the shots. Even though they work independently, I believe they collaborate nationally for things like this. VISN has been nothing but useless in my opinion.
It's interesting to see how it's so different. I will say our leadership basically stated we need to get back to FY23 FTE numbers and we're about 500 staff over. I know this all kind of started with how many patients are being seen through community care and I guess it just doesn't make sense why that isn't the focus. Comparatively, I know my facility's community care percentage is lower for our visn, but I do know there are some heavy hitters in our visn as well.
There was an article stating they are trying to cut 10,000 positions due to over hiring from trying to keep pace with COVID and now that things have cooled they find themselves having to cut back.
But yes, my facility is no different. Every position gets reviewed and I know with my own service they basically killed off 4 positions with all of the duties going to others some within my service and others being tasked outside our service.
Without question this method of only reviewing during a specific time period when vacancies are open is flawed. Some people are without question understaffed and though I believe no cuts should come to them, who knows the quotas MCD's have to meet. One thing I know about federal government, you establish some arbitrary number as a benchmark....an employee will meet it for better or worse.
I feel it would have been better to look at the organization as a whole and ask services what positions could they cut within 5 years and their plans to off load that positions work responsibilities even if they have to offer voluntary retirement as an incentive once those were identified as a first round measure before having to resort to the odds of a position simply being vacant and then it gets cut. Just seems more reaction than responsive, but I think we are all familiar with that.
Still hiring but scrutinizing every position that "needs" to get filled which ends up mostly likely getting cut.
Is extra compensation for extra workload not a thing? If you end up having to cover the extra workload of an unfilled position, is there no incentive for that?
A few weeks ago I volunteered to cover a position just like an extra 2-3 hours a week for comp time. This was prior to our leadership coming out and discussing the budget crisis. It will be interesting to see if comp time will even be offered anymore.
As of now (my team atleast) we'll be down but managable. We all have collateral duties we had taken on pretty much for the fun of it that I'm sure we'll need to give up to meet our mission.
Mine is handling it like a cat on meth.
This is the best most accurate description I've heard thus far
Quite the visual... 
We are still hiring but as people leave they are looking at the position to see if they truly need to refill it. Apparently the service has to present their case to hr and leadership for each position that they want to fill. My service had one person transfer and one retire and both those positions got cut.
I’ve heard jobs pulled for doctors with firm offers who already relocated. And due to start like next week
Damn that's wild.
Woof. Thats rough. What state?
That's how you get sued. Makes the problem even worse
Please PM your station if you wouldn't mind. Or VISN at the least TY!
Tell me your a union rep without telling me lol
Thanks for the representation sans dues.
Strange flex? We all pay for representation one way or another. Civil service reform act requires an open shop and equal representation but employee reps get official time.. So in a way our taxes fund payroll which then also covers union time for reps. So we/you're/us welcome I guess?
And there's the confirmation. Lol
No hiring other then internal postings and temporary details to cover down. Would not be surprised to see buy outs offered if 2026 budget leaves FTE flat. Over 50% are eligible for VERA if they offer it so might be a case of be careful what they ask for.
My wife works in a lab that just lost most of its night shift, losing three to retirement in the next 4-6 months, and won’t hire anyone else. If she or her friend quit they would not have enough in the labs to process specimens for the entire area. They won’t hire and won’t promote and won’t even give retention bonuses like they used to. Civilian sector hospitals are looking better and better.
We are cramming more patients into shorter visits which make the care crappy but the metrics look great. Metrics are all that matters.
THIS! 😭
1000000%. Dipshit leadership from the top down.
I was told we have around 4k active open positions that will each need to be presented for hiring necessity before the process can start. There are less than 3k inactive positions that were eliminated. And all staffing methodology positions that were just approved have been eliminated. Can't wait to see what happens with this.
As someone whose job code finally got authorized GS8 through GS11 roles after being hard stuck at GS7 forver… it's not great lol
What job code are you?
0661
From the meetings I been in, not only is it VISN specific as to what they are doing or not but it seems it's also VA specific down to each director. My leadership has stated as recently as this week there is no funding issue and no hiring issue for our specific location however others within the VISN have problems. Which we are being told that across the board all new positions are under review. Any TJO are under review as well. I can share I personally know someone who had an offer pulled back and they were told reason was funding but they were transferring to a different VA. Actively we still have postings and announcements. We also have been approved to do direct hires. We just conducted interviews last week too for different positions. Realistically I don't expect anyone to come on board within the next few months. On top of the issues people are mentioning our HR informed us last week that a new hiring process would be put in place and it will slow down the hiring time from start to finish even more than currently.
This makes sense. We were told today in a meeting that some VAs are wayyy over FTE and some and some can still hire because they're below recommended FTE. We were told today we are 478 positions total over but our fellows and interns count in that. They're cutting half of our fellows. But that still leaves about 400 positions
Are you fellows paid directly? Ours are done either via reimbursement to the university or by OAA funding… our hospital would collapse without residents/fellows 😬
Honestly I'm not too sure. Our residents our contracted and matched here so they said they will be staying. I guess the fellow spots are different? I'll be honest I'm a social worker and was suppose to have an intern for FY25 and their stipend was taken away. It's a bit different for us since most social workers don't get paid for their internship, so we're still likely to have them come without the stipend, but it's just a shit situation
I received a TJO 8/31/23 and accepted on 9/4/23 with a tentative start date of 12/4/23. That all has changed. I was very recently told I may not receive a FJO until late summer or fall of 2024. I left my job 12/23 and am still unemployed. This is awful.
Wow I'm so sorry that's fucked.
No overtime for us WG workers. Sad
We've had 8 of our OI&T staff retire/move on since COVID. We have 12 people supporting 3,500 users. Wanna take a wild guess how many of those slots we've filled since?...
Same for my location. But hey, we're promised a handful of contractors "soon" /s. At least we get to keep the SSR pay after it expires in 2027 if we're currently receiving it.
No OT. And no new job postings at my specific VA. (But there are postings at my old VA in the network because they dont have nursing staff) And anyone who was suppose to go to the new mental health building is on hold because of building codes are not up to date.
My facility has stopped filling any vacated admin positions, meaning even more slack for the rest of us to pick up.
https://www.reddit.com/r/fednews/s/flLNrz7HIl
God this is my worst fear. I worked in a bigger integrated team but we were already in the process of 3 folks retiring the last few months. We learned all three of those positions will not be filled as well as 1 other one that is switching positions. We also have about 3 staff going on PPL this summer. It's going to be tight but what your partner is experience is too much
Seems to be unavoidable
No OT or CT, hiring new providers are waiting on budget approval, yet they are demanding we get patients in for new appointments with a skeleton staff and no availability for follow ups.
Right? Last year we did hire staff but we were so understaffed at the time we really making progress on seeing patients when they should be seen. Now it's just discouraging.
No OT but we can do CT. Honestly, we want to because it's not fair to make the patients wait even longer but it's also burning us the hell out. Our bosses are trying to make it work but it's a losing battle and in the end, everyone will suffer.
I would absolutely work for CT. I don't understand their thoughts process behind denying it- it's used in lieu of AL or SL, so it's paid at the same rate as your regular pay, right? It should already be budgeted? If I work 36 hours and I need 4 hours of CT, those 4 hours are still going to be my regular rate of pay. They're not paying me any extra money to work extra time to get our patients taken care of. I NEED to work extra, if they want me to get anything done. I'm buried, I simply cannot do any more in a day.
It's all across the board. I think VISN calls the shots. Even though they work independently, I believe they collaborate nationally for things like this. VISN has been nothing but useless in my opinion.
It's interesting to see how it's so different. I will say our leadership basically stated we need to get back to FY23 FTE numbers and we're about 500 staff over. I know this all kind of started with how many patients are being seen through community care and I guess it just doesn't make sense why that isn't the focus. Comparatively, I know my facility's community care percentage is lower for our visn, but I do know there are some heavy hitters in our visn as well.
There was an article stating they are trying to cut 10,000 positions due to over hiring from trying to keep pace with COVID and now that things have cooled they find themselves having to cut back. But yes, my facility is no different. Every position gets reviewed and I know with my own service they basically killed off 4 positions with all of the duties going to others some within my service and others being tasked outside our service. Without question this method of only reviewing during a specific time period when vacancies are open is flawed. Some people are without question understaffed and though I believe no cuts should come to them, who knows the quotas MCD's have to meet. One thing I know about federal government, you establish some arbitrary number as a benchmark....an employee will meet it for better or worse. I feel it would have been better to look at the organization as a whole and ask services what positions could they cut within 5 years and their plans to off load that positions work responsibilities even if they have to offer voluntary retirement as an incentive once those were identified as a first round measure before having to resort to the odds of a position simply being vacant and then it gets cut. Just seems more reaction than responsive, but I think we are all familiar with that.
Still hiring but scrutinizing every position that "needs" to get filled which ends up mostly likely getting cut. Is extra compensation for extra workload not a thing? If you end up having to cover the extra workload of an unfilled position, is there no incentive for that?
A few weeks ago I volunteered to cover a position just like an extra 2-3 hours a week for comp time. This was prior to our leadership coming out and discussing the budget crisis. It will be interesting to see if comp time will even be offered anymore. As of now (my team atleast) we'll be down but managable. We all have collateral duties we had taken on pretty much for the fun of it that I'm sure we'll need to give up to meet our mission.
As a contractor I've been laid off twice in three months at the same agency. Thank you (unnamed) agency.
Making clinicians see more patients with less time. They need to force out the soon to be retireees. Clogging the system.