{"id":37017,"date":"2025-07-08T02:45:00","date_gmt":"2025-07-08T02:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/site.itshrt.com\/worldnews\/veterans-affairs-dept-drops-plan-to-lay-off-thousands-in-august\/"},"modified":"2025-07-08T02:45:00","modified_gmt":"2025-07-08T02:45:00","slug":"veterans-affairs-dept-drops-plan-to-lay-off-thousands-in-august","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/site.itshrt.com\/worldnews\/veterans-affairs-dept-drops-plan-to-lay-off-thousands-in-august\/","title":{"rendered":"Veterans Affairs Dept. drops plan to lay off thousands in August"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <script async src=\"https:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js?client=ca-pub-6606220950177433\"\r\n     crossorigin=\"anonymous\"><\/script>\r\n<!-- ItShrt World News -->\r\n<ins class=\"adsbygoogle\"\r\n     style=\"display:block\"\r\n     data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-6606220950177433\"\r\n     data-ad-slot=\"1882483372\"\r\n     data-ad-format=\"auto\"\r\n     data-full-width-responsive=\"true\"><\/ins>\r\n<script>\r\n     (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});\r\n<\/script>\r\n<br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div id=\"\">\n<p>The Department of Veterans Affairs has dropped plans revealed in a <span class=\"link\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/news\/department-of-veterans-affairs-jobs-trump-doge\/\" data-invalid-url-rewritten-http=\"\">memo<\/a><\/span> earlier this year to lay off tens of thousands of personnel in August, a news release from the department indicated Monday.<\/p>\n<p>The VA announced it&#8217;s currently on pace to reduce its staff by about 30,000 employees by the end of this fiscal year, in September, thereby &#8220;eliminating the need for a large-scale reduction-in-force,&#8221; or RIF.<\/p>\n<p>The department originally planned to reduce its staff to 2019 levels, or just under 400,000, according to a memo obtained by <span class=\"link\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/news\/department-of-veterans-affairs-jobs-trump-doge\/\" data-invalid-url-rewritten-http=\"\">CBS News<\/a><\/span> in March. The VA said in its release that it had &#8220;roughly 484,000 employees on Jan. 1, 2025&#8221; \u2014 meaning the initial plans would have required the VA to cut upwards of 80,000 jobs.<\/p>\n<p>In a statement included in the release, Secretary of Veterans Affairs Doug Collins said that as a result of a &#8220;holistic&#8221; department-wide review, the VA &#8220;is headed in the right direction \u2014 both in terms of staff levels and customer service. A department-wide RIF is off the table, but that doesn&#8217;t mean we&#8217;re done improving VA.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The VA acknowledged in the release that the agency &#8220;had been considering a department-wide RIF to reduce staff levels by up to 15%,&#8221; but said &#8220;employee reductions through the federal hiring freeze, deferred resignations, retirements and normal attrition have eliminated the need for that RIF.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>A spokesperson for the VA said in a statement Monday that it spent &#8220;nearly four months conducting a holistic review of the department to see what needs to be changed.&#8221; The department claimed that in recent months, the VA has improved services for veterans, citing &#8220;huge drops in the number of Veterans waiting for disability benefits, sizeable increases in claims processing productivity, and extraordinary progress regarding our electronic health record modernization.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The spokesperson said the original number of 80,000 staff cuts &#8220;got employees thinking outside of the box to come up with new and better ways of serving Veterans,&#8221; and the &#8220;main goal all along has been creating the best possible experiences and outcomes&#8221; for veterans and their families.<\/p>\n<p>Under the Biden administration, the VA hired tens of thousands of workers, in part to help administer the\u00a0<span class=\"link\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/news\/burn-pits-toxic-exposure-pact-act-veterans-affairs\/\" data-invalid-url-rewritten-http=\"\">PACT Act<\/a><\/span>, which addresses toxic exposures veterans suffered while serving in the military. The Trump administration initially looked at cutting staff levels to pre-Biden administration levels.<\/p>\n<p>The Trump administration imposed a broader hiring freeze on many government jobs earlier this year, part of a push to cut the size of the federal workforce. The VA <a href=\"https:\/\/department.va.gov\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/12678309_memo-hiring-freeze-guidance-signed.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">exempted some roles<\/a> from that freeze, including many health care jobs at the agency&#8217;s hospital network. The administration also offered a voluntary &#8220;<span class=\"link\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/news\/judge-allows-trumps-deferred-resignations-plan-federal-workers-to-proceed\/\" data-invalid-url-rewritten-http=\"\">deferred resignation<\/a><\/span>&#8221; deal that allowed thousands of federal workers to leave their jobs in early February and get paid until September.<\/p>\n<p>Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut took note of the reversal of the planned mass layoffs at the VA and blamed the work environment at the department.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This announcement makes clear VA is bleeding employees across the board at an unsustainable rate because of the toxic work environment created by this Administration and DOGE&#8217;s slash and trash policies,&#8221; Blumenthal, the top Democrat on the Senate Veterans&#8217; Affairs Committee, said in a statement. &#8220;This is not &#8216;natural&#8217; attrition, it is not strategic, and it will inevitably impact veterans&#8217; care and benefits \u2014 no matter what blanket assurances the VA Secretary hides behind.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Blumenthal noted the VA workforce usually expands by about 10,000 &#8220;in a typical year,&#8221; and its statement that it was losing 30,000 this year means the VA &#8220;still stands to lose tens of thousands more employees than ever before.&#8221; He complained that the administration &#8220;repeatedly refused to share any additional information about this plan to cut 83,000 VA employees and what positions would be targeted.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"content__meta--contributors\">\n<p>                                  <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/team\/nikole-killion\/\" class=\"byline__author__link\" data-invalid-url-rewritten-http=\"\">Nikole  Killion<\/a><\/p>\n<p>        contributed to this report.\n    <\/p>\n<p>    <!-- data-recirc-source=\"queryly\" --><\/p>\n<aside class=\"component list recirculation component--type-recirculation \">\n<p><h3 class=\"component__title\">More from CBS News<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n<\/aside>\n<p>    <!-- tags --><\/p>\n<div class=\"content-author\">\n      <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/team\/eleanor-morgan-watson\/\" class=\"content-author__name\" data-invalid-url-rewritten-http=\"\">Eleanor  Watson<\/a><\/p>\n<div class=\"content-author__bio\">\n<div class=\"content-author__full-information\">\n<p class=\"content-author__text\">Eleanor Watson is a CBS News multi-platform reporter and producer covering the Pentagon.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js?client=ca-pub-6606220950177433\"\r\n     crossorigin=\"anonymous\"><\/script>\r\n<!-- ItShrt World News -->\r\n<ins class=\"adsbygoogle\"\r\n     style=\"display:block\"\r\n     data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-6606220950177433\"\r\n     data-ad-slot=\"1882483372\"\r\n     data-ad-format=\"auto\"\r\n     data-full-width-responsive=\"true\"><\/ins>\r\n<script>\r\n     (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});\r\n<\/script>\r\n<br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/news\/veterans-affairs-drops-plan-to-lay-off-thousands-in-august\/\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Department of Veterans Affairs has dropped plans revealed in a memo earlier this year to lay off tens of<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37018,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37017","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v24.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Veterans Affairs Dept. drops plan to lay off thousands in August - World News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The Department of Veterans Affairs earlier this year had planned to cut tens of thousands of workers to return its workforce to just under 400,000.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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