The 11th episode of AFGE’s new series, The Activist, highlighting our union members who have stepped up to help make a difference in the lives of their colleagues and our government.
LaVawn is a veterans service representative at VBA Philadelphia Regional Office and Insurance Center. She has been a member of AFGE Local 940 since 2006. Her job is to help veterans file claims for service-connected disabilities.
She joined AFGE after discovering that the work they were doing wasn’t recorded correctly for the purposes of performance. She noticed that something needed to change, and when she talked to management, she was stonewalled.
“So the employee that I sat next to was a union rep, and he said you would be perfect for the union. You asked the right questions. They would never answer them, but you asked the right questions,” she recalled. “I became a union member and shortly afterward a steward.”
Besides getting to make a difference, being a union member provides her with a lot of benefits, including additional training for upward mobility, education benefits, and assistance with personal goals.
Listen to LaVawn talk about what it’s like working for the VBA:
AFGE’s National Veterans Affairs Council (NVAC) went back to court last week to prevent the Department of Veterans Affairs from illegally terminating our collective bargaining agreement covering more than 320,000 VA employees.
Read More
AFGE along with two federal employees filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission last week challenging the agency’s refusal to process federal-sector class complaints pending before its administrative judges.
Read More
Two newly introduced bills and another that’s moving through Congress would expand paid family and medical leave for federal employees, make it easier to secure medical care and related benefits for workplace injuries, and address unsafe air and ventilation issues in federal buildings.
Read More
