At the VA Medical Center in West Palm Beach, Florida, nurses are leaving in droves to go work for other VA facilities or private hospitals in the area that provide better pay. Who can blame them? They’re making $30,000-40,000 less than those working down the road in Miami.
Because the hospital doesn’t have enough staff but serves over 60,000 veterans, the VA resorts to overbooking patients, causing issues for both veterans and employees alike. Some employees are being made to work without any rest periods. Doctors are working beyond their schedules but are not given credit hours. Even new hires are fleeing after being on the job for only three months.
“It’s hard to recruit because we’re some of the lowest paid employees. We lost nurses and doctors to either other VA or private hospitals in the area,” said Cynthia Boston-Thompson, president of AFGE Local 507 representing 3,000 bargaining unit employees at the West Palm Beach VA, five clinics, and a cemetery.
To stop the bleeding, the local has been trying to get the VA to raise base pay and locality pay and to do a survey to see which positions need retention and recruitment bonuses. The local has also been trying to get management to release the results of the market pay survey they did last year. Management has ignored all the requests.
Recently, the local hosted a congressional town hall inviting members of Congress to hear the plight of the workers, which affects the quality of care they provide to veterans.
Indeed, one day before the scheduled town hall, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid released the results of a patient satisfaction survey that gave West Palm Beach VA one star out of five for quality of care.
Boston-Thompson said employees were surprised but knew exactly why. The one-star rating actually confirms what they have been saying all along about working conditions there.
Three Florida members of Congress – Reps. Brian Mast, Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, and Lois Frankel – attended the town hall. They are setting up meetings with VA management to discuss the market survey and retention and recruitment bonuses.
The local president said she was grateful that AFGE Public Policy Director Jacque Simon attended the townhall to talk about how locality pay and pay systems under Title 5, Title 38, and wage grade work. After the town hall, Simon also spoke with the VA under secretary for health about the issue.
“Our number one priority is to get our employees paid correctly,” she added. “It’s about pay equity for everyone across the board.”