This Women’s History Month, AFGE proudly recognizes a labor giant in our movement, National Veterans Affairs Council President Emerita Alma L. Lee.
After serving a historic 12 terms for 33 years as president of AFGE’s NVAC, Lee retired in November 2025. She began her 35-year career as a federal employee at the Salem VA Medical Center, where she worked first in and later Nursing Service. Throughout her career she demonstrated a commitment to veterans, their families, and her fellow federal employees.
She graduated cum laude from Virginia Western Community College in Roanoke and furthered her education at Atlanta University in Georgia with an emphasis in counseling those dealing with substance abuse and their families.
Her union career began at the grassroots level at AFGE Local 1739 at the Salem VA Medical Center, where she served in many positions including steward, vice president, and fair practices coordinator for the 4th District. She also served as president of Local 1739 for 17 years. Historically, Lee was the first woman elected as president of her local and was the first woman elected to head the AFGE National VA Council.
Click here to watch the tribute video shared at the November National VA Council Convention.
Lee’s union career exemplifies her strong principles devoted to improving the workplace through the empowerment of employees. Working closely with the late Veterans Affairs Secretary Jesse Brown, she sought to end adversarial labor-management relationships, to improve communications, and to build bridges between employees, administrators, veterans’ service organizations, and the public.
Alma Lee signs the AFGE/VA master agreement at the signing ceremony in 2011.
During Lee’s first term as president of the National VA Council, a historic National Partnership Agreement was signed between VA management and five unions representing VA workers, including AFGE, that gave labor the opportunity to be involved in workplace initiatives. Also signed during Lee’s first term was the National Total Quality Improvement Agreement, which established the National Quality Council and local TQI committees. These committees were tasked to improve the ways in which services were provided to our nation’s veterans and to ensure that the VA is a provider of quality health care today and in the future.
Alma Lee joins the picket line in front of the St. Pete VA Regional Office in Florida to shed light on the culture of retaliation and need for improved working conditions at the facility (2015).
In her second term, Lee was the union’s chief negotiator for the NVAC Contract Negotiating Team, which authored the 1997 Master Agreement. During her sixth term, Lee once again sat as the union’s chief negotiator for a new master agreement, which was ratified March 15, 2011. Again in her 10th and 11th terms, she continued to be the chief negotiator for the union contract negotiation team.
Alma Lee speaks at the Fed Up? Rise Up! Rally in 2019 in Washington, DC.
Lee was not only active in her union, but also the broader labor and civil rights communities. Over the years she has been a member of the Coalition of Labor Union Women, the NAACP, National Partnership Council, and AFGE PAC. She received the Bernice Heffner Award as the Outstanding Woman in AFGE and was the first recipient of AFGE’s Woman of Labor Award in 2020. She also was named the Outstanding Labor Woman of the Year in Virginia and has received numerous other awards and honors throughout her career.
At the NVAC’s 25th Triennial Convention, held last year, Lee was recognized by the AFGE National Executive Council for her more than three decades of distinguished service and visionary leadership to the VA members of AFGE.
This Women’s History Month, we are reminded of the remarkable women who have made AFGE a formidable force in defending the workplace rights of government workers. Our union is stronger because of the leadership, guidance, determination and fight of trailblazing women like Alma L. Lee.
In 2018 Alma Lee leads AFGE members and other union activists in a demonstration outside the VA headquarters to raise awareness about staffing shortages and lack of funding for the agency.
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