kennedy discusses his legacy on the high court. it's from the annual ninth circuit judicial conference in anaheim, california. you can see it tonight at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span. >> saturday at 10:00 a.m. eastern on american history tv, live all day coverage of the confederate icon's conference from james madison university in harrisonburg, virginia. speakers are christy coleman, ceo of the american civil war museum and john coski, kevin walker, ceo of the schenn an doan yeah valley battlefield foundation, caroline janney and james robertson, author of the book "after the civil war," the heroes, villians, soldiers and civilians that changed america. watch the conference saturday morning starting at 10:00 eastern on american history tv on c-span3.

>> before the confirmation of robert wilke, peter o'rourke testified before the house veterans affairs committee on workforce morale, whistleblower training, staff vacancies and va employee performance. this is about 2 1/2 hours. >> good morning. the committee will come to order. welcome. thankal you a thank you all for joining us on the implementation of the department of veterans affairs accountable and whistle bs blower protection act of 2017. last year's enactment of this legislation was years of work by members of this committee and also the reforms to the federal civil service system. this law put in place to provide

the secretary the tools he or she needs to protect whistle blowers and hold poor performing employees accountable. i said time and time again that the vast majority of the va employees are good, hard-working men and women who take the va's core mission to heart. but before this law, the bad actions of a few tanlted the good names of many for far too long. the drafting of this legislation did not happen in a vacuum. ideas to improve the legislation were received from all corners to include federal employee unions. it was not an ideological or partisan attack on federal workers. in fact, the final negotiated package passed the u.s. senate by voice vote. the full house by vote of 368-55 including 23 of the 24 mebmbers of this committee and 137 democrats and supported by 18 veteran service organizations. i'm proud they were able to come together and craft this important legislation, our role

in overseeing the laws implementation is equally important and that's why we're here today. the only way to bring true accountability to va is to create a culture where employees want to come to work and serve veterans. this will only happen when good work is consistently rewarded and when it's clear that the department won't tolerate employees who do not live up to the high standards required of public service. we remember the stories of poor performance and misconduct about a few select va employees who refused to or incapable of adhering to the high standards. we found time and time again that civil service laws make it extremely difficult and time consuming to hold an employee accountable who didn't share va's values even in instances where the employee in question broke the law. i think every one of us on this panel can agree that this is unacceptable and that our veterans deserve better.

today we'll discuss how we are moving forward and efforts to educate employees and manage berz this new authority. also want to make it clear that while this law made it easier to discipline poor employees, did it not give va the license to use this authority to target employees no matter their position or grade or to retaliate against whistle-blowers. he would continue to count on whistleblowers to shed light on waste, froaud and abuse throughout va. i want to know how the implementation of this law is protecting the courageous employees. we can't measure tuck ses of this law's implementation against a number of disciplinary actions but we can measure failure. and if one single man or woman is afraid to come forward to report wrongdoing because of fear of retaliation to me, that would be a failure. i want to briefly touch on the

operations of the office of accountability and whistleblower office. there were concerns expressed about creating another office at the va that could duplicate efforts of other offices when what we really needed to do what empower managers to make the right decisions and hold they will accountable when they failed to do so. while the employees and management of oawp should be awarded for efforts to improve accountable within the va, i'm concerned they seek to expand its role beyond what congress intended. i'm concerned by some of the recommendations that the va submitted to congress as part of its june 30th annual report and about the growth of this new office and i look forward to addressing those concerns today. the goal of this new authority was to provide the secretary a tool and their toolbox to discipline poor employees. i'm worried that if we're not careful they may turn into an

effective -- an entirely new tool booch toolbox. we must ensure this doesn't happen. i'm no fan of red tape or bureaucracy. i'm concerned about the lack of formal written policies or procedures for operations at oawp. formal policies and procedures would promote consistent oawp decisions and inspire confidence in their worth and work product. i also remain concerned about the on going conflict between mr. o'rourke and the inspector general over the access to the data base of complaints. i hope you have found a way to put this unnecessary destruction hand us. i understand that you have. finally, i want to reiterate this committee will not shy away from our oversight role to investigate improper usage and implementation of this law. however, the only way to do so is to continue this committee's bipartisan tradition examine issues with statistics and facts and not innuendo or accounts or partisan jaendas. now i yield to our ranking member for any opening statements he might have.

>> thank you, mr. chairman. i thank you for calling this important hearing. when the accountability act passed last summer, i voted for it with a great deal of caution. i was cautiously optimistic that it would do what it set out to do. what was to provide care by making -- to improve care which are was to improve care by making it easier to remove bad employees. i understood that the connection between dismissing bad employees and improved care was super efficiently. but the bill was the best of several legislative attempts to address the va's significant issues in its management of human resources. i did vote against several of those legislative attempts because i felt that there were just too many bad things in those bills. but i voted for this bill

because i hoped the va would take the tools we were providing so that they could address bad employees and good employees. but now that we are more than a year out, i have real concerns about how the va is using the tools that congress provided in the accountability act. a majority of those fired were house keeping aides. this has contributed to the fact that there are over a dozen medical senters with house keeping vick ancies. i have seen firsthand the problems caused by vacancies in house keeping staff. at the university medical center near my district, i see how that directly impacts care for veterans. i also find it hard to believe that there are large numbers of

house keeping aides whose performance is so poor that it cannot ab dressed. if that is true to the case then it stands to reason that there are also management issues behind their poor performance. but of those 1,096 removals, only 15 were supervisors. which is less than 1.4%. firing and -- firing rank and file employees does nothing to resolve persistent management issues. it just leads to worse care from unnecessary vacancies. this type of implementation is not the intent of the accountability act. i hope everyone can agree that it's not possible to fire your way to excellence. in fact, this was a view that was shared by the commission on care's findings which also found that the va's human resources management was understaffed and underresourced. this led to problems with poor

hiring practices and poor workplace culture. this further exacerbated the va's difficulties in hiring the best and the brightest and, therefore, creating a vicious cycle. the accountability act was supposed to be the va's tool to break this vicious cycle. but in the past year, we have heard indication that's va's human resources management is in more disarray than ever. a high turnover rate is never a good sign of good management. and good management starts at the top. for months we have seen a steady stream of reports in the press of a hostile work environment in the va's human resources division previously led by peter shelby. then just last week it was reported that mr. shelby himself was fired. although the va released a statement saying that he left to pursue other opportunities and whether any of those reports are

true, the damage to va's hr management has already been done. i am not sure how the va is supposed to improve its human resources management when such stories of its toxic environment are at the top are ram pant. finally, it is in the midst of this turmoil that this administration released a new executive order that limits the amount of official time for employees to no more than 25%. as we all know, official time is not spent on unit activities. let me repeat that. official time is not spent on union activities because spending time on union activities is illegal. rather, it is time spent by union officials to perform human resources functions and ensure a we will functioning work environment for all va employees.

with the current turmoil in the hr division, the function on official time perform is more important than ever in ensuring that care for veterans is not impacted. this does not inspire confidence that performance is improving at the agency. the goal of the act is not to further undercut the already strained va workforce. firing cannot replace good management. i hope our discussion today will shed more light on what the va is doing in a implementation of the accountability act to ensure better performance among its employees through better management. i thank the witnesses for being here today and i look forward to their testimony. >> i thank the gentleman for yielding. on the first panel today, we welcome back mr. peelter o'rourke, acting secretary of the department of veterans affairs. we spent the weekend in reno with a disabled american

veterans at a great convention out there. i thought we spent a couple hours on panl togetha panel tog. mr. o'rourke is accompanied by the acting executive director of the office of accountability and whistleblower protection. and the principal deputy assistant of administration. mr. o'rourke, you're now recognized. >> thank you, mr. chairman. ranking member, thank you, distinguished members of the committee. ai i'm pleased to be here. >> let me get right to the point. retaliation against employees who identify legitimate problem or report there may be a violation of alaw, rule or regulation is unacceptable. i will not tolerate it. protectsing employees from retaliation is a moral obligation of va leaders, a statutory obligation and a priority for the department.

we take action to hold accountable those in retaliation and that includes appropriate disciplinary action. i'm confident that overwhelming majority of our employees are here to do the right thing. our best employees own accountability because they are here to make a positive difference in the lives of veterans. they use the formula to address accountability and that's why we're talking to day. the problems that surfaced in 2014 and covered serious short falls in the way leaders dealt with employees who made disclosures. they led to the interdisciplinary team and expanded into the accountability review. the purpose was to improve transparency and elevate the visibility of senior misconduct and investigations. those initial efforts shaped a new cultural direction for va. this is why congress passed and the president signed the bltability and whistleblower protection act. the president and congress

ensured we had the right system and processes in place to protect employees who raise concerns and expose problems or issues and to also hold accountable those who engage in misconduct. the president's executive order and congress's legislative work in 2017 established oawp creating a new paradigm. so how can we promote accountability and improve performance? we change the culture within. that change must be encouraged by leaders who embrace accountability and productive workplace that empowers the employees. i own the responsibility of that change that is needed to move va forward but let me be clear, making enduring cultural and process changes in an organization the size of va takes time, persistence, and patience. the goal is to ensure we have a better system in place one that

works for the employees. that task is threefold. first, protect employees from retaliation, emphasize the need for greater transparency and promptly investigate and resolve allegations of misconduct. simply put, our policies must be aligned at every level to reflect the open and transparent way va strives to operate. i've even from the results in the reports implemented that the new office is making a difference and will continue to build on this foundation and the coming years. let me highlight a few of our accomplishments in the past year. the office averages 170 employee whistleblower disclosures to that office in which the staff quickly examine the concerns and in an effort to develop the issue raised. from june 23, 2017 to june 1, 2018, the staff assessed nearly 2,000 submissions of alleged wrongdoing. the advisory and analysis division completed 182 cases,

the same office recommended disciplinary or adverse actions in 54 of the cases involving 58 unique persons of interest. this is only in the first year. while our work just beginning, i'm confident that those numbers will change as we continue to promote promote accountability and change the culture of va. we are all after the same ultimate objective. we provide the high quality care, services and benefits they earned and they deserve. veterans and the american people expect us to work together on their bee half. we look forward to doing so. and i look forward to your questions. >> thank you. >> you mentioneded that 58 people had had some disciplinary action s that correct? out of 360 plus thousand employees?

>> yes, sir. that's at the senior leader level. >> do you believe that this law has been successful? do you think this -- when i say that, per your comment this weekend about the impact it has on managing this organization and what are the three top metrics that you use to define success? >> the initial standup of the office and the first thing you try to work through is just the recognition of what the new capability is, what we're trying to do and n. communicate that's across and the case of the senior leadership workforce. senior executives, folks in confidential or policy making position. that is difficult and an organization the size and scope of va, getting out to visit with visit with medical center directors and teaching them, helping them understand what the purpose of that office is in a context of we're here to

possibly investigate your misconduct or your performance is a tight rope to walk. but i believe we did that pretty successfully by going into nonthreatening environments with them and also with meeting with the unions and groups, training everyone that would take our call to reach out to them to answer any questions that they would have. >> how do you answer? i read some of the whistleblower -- in here who feel they have been retaliated against. how do you -- i'm not saying what they've said is true or not true. i read this last night on several letters that are submitted for the record. how do you adjudicate them when they say they're locked in a -- put in an office to do nothing for a year, 15 months, 16 months whatever? how do you make them whole in that case? >> first is listening to the whistleblower. what we found very quickly was that a lot of the folks that came to us initially that had things to say, whether they were a legitimate whistleblower

complaint was a matter of defining and making sure they understand what that definition was. but regardless of the definition, it was listening to them and making sure their voice was heard. and then doing the investigation or going on site to actually see what they were claiming and having either a discuss with their supervisors or with the leadership of that organization to determine what was really going on. a lot of times we found is really just two sides not talking to each other. and times we could facilitate that ti. long. times it had been too so we needed to take other action whether thatme meant a fl blown the matter or referring it off. >> this will fail if you don't protect the whistleblowers. they have to feel like you can step forward and say something and not be retaliated against. that's a huge deterent to finding out what's going on in an organization as large as the va. >> absolutely. and getting that word out and changing that cultural piece is going to take some time.

there are places that are more difficult than others. the one thing that we, that you provided in this bill was what's called what we call anecdotally the 714 hold. that wasn't something that had been -- that existed before and what that meant is employees gs 15 and below that had enaction, that they might feel is retaliatory, we were able to step in as the office, as the director and i can tell and stop that action. put a hold on that action not allowing it to move forward until whether it was the office of accountability or the office of special counsel could then investigate that disclosure for its substance, whether it was real or not but during that period of time that employee could not be affected. whether it was retaliatory or not. >> how do you respond to charge that's the law unfairly targeting lower level employees, many of whom are veterans? >> i have specific that's i'm going to let mr. manly address specifically. but it's in the data.

the 218 report that was requirement of the law as we put through and as we looked at this and we look back to 2014 and forward, you don't see a significant difference from year to year, frankly in, any category of unrealistic, you know, firings or removals of any category of employee let alone focusing on lower level employees. and mr. manly has a few more details on that too. >> certainly. we took a look aticus -- at custodial workers and cafeteria workers. from a percentage perspective, less than 1% increase in the number of terminations of that level of employee. now granted, those three occupations are the highest occupation within the veterans health organization for terminations. and that's the nature of the work. that compares favorably -- compares similarly to the private sector. >> my time expired.

you're recognized. >> thank you, mr. chairman. mr. o'rourke, i understand that the va has provided the office of the inspector general access to oawp information this information that they are entit entitled to under the inspector general act. can i get your commitment that you will provide and continue to provide to the oig full, complete and prompt access to aowp records and all other requests made by the oig? >> has been complied with, even before this morning's recent access to a share point site. >> i want to know if you were -- that you will continue to provide the oig full, complete and prompt access to aowp records and all of their requests. i realize you complied with the previous request. i know there was a very public spat over that. i wanted to get your commitment today that you will comply with

future oig requests. >> it's unfortunate that that has been such a public -- about one issue. this has been, his access to aowp, has been unfettered since day one. >> that's not what played out. i just want to get your commitment that you will comply with future oig requests. >> my commitment remains the same as it has been since day one, to provide -- >> i'm not interested in day one, what you claim to have said. i want to know from this day forward, will you comply with the oig? >> yes. >> thank you. i am concerned that of the 1,096 removals during the first five months, less than 1.5% were ma juror 'tis a j ma -- there has been a preference requirement for the category -- veteran preference

requirement and hiring under non-competitive for veterans in this job category. in the past, the vast majority, close to 100% of employees at the v.a. in this category have been disabled veterans. that can vary by facility. but my impression is that in this category because of these -- the vast majority of the workers tend to be veterans -- disabled veterans. would you agree with that? >> no, sir, i wouldn't. not disabled veterans. that's a veterans preference they have. that's all veterans. >> but whether it's disabled veterans and veterans, they tend to be a very veteran-dominated job category. let's be clear that this is who we have -- majority of the 1,096 employees who have been removed. majority have come from the housekeeping category. we are talking veterans here.

not one-third, but in this category one-third of all veterans -- one-third of all -- nearly 100% in this job category. as i mentioned, if there are so many housekeeping aides with poor performance, it's likely there are management issues there as well. what are you doing to ensure that personal decisions -- personnel decisions super as adverse actions are addressing care issues and not just unnecessarily creating vacancies at lower levels while the real problems remain -- the real -- >> i think it's helpful to be clear about the turnover rate at that housekeeper level. regardless whether they are veterans or not, that's -- that's our highest turnover area regardless whether this is in the v.a. or outside the v.a. our turnover rates in that area are lower than the private sector which is closer to 200%. >> you are shifting the focus of

our conversation. we're talking about people who have been removed. we're not talking about turnovers. how is that relevant to what my questions are talking about? >> it includes removals -- >> you are going on to a different point. we are talking about removal. that implies management issues. >> even removals, if you go back to 2014, there's not a dramatic difference than there was before. which indicates year over year -- >> we are talking about the first five months about all the removals. >> if you go to 2014, you will see the same removals even before the accountability. >> this gets to this issue of who we are removing and whether we're addressing bad management, unskilled management. what we're doing to improve the personnel function and the fact the personnel function of the v.a. is in turmoil. >> i don't connect those two. i will stay focused on the removal or turnover rate of the lower -- >> what are you doing to ensure that these crucial positions

such as those -- my time has run out. i yield back. >> thank you. >> thank you, mr. chairman. to the acting secretary, i want to thank you so much for your responding to a concern that was raised by a whistleblower in denver, colorado, that led to -- within the v.a. oig and that pulling it to a higher level to make sure there's no conflict of interest. i want to thank you for being so responsive to that. let me raise an issue of accountability. i guess it's different than what was raised in that i am concerned that -- if you could relay this to the incoming secretary. at the senior executive

management level, that we have had individuals in these positions who have had multiple negative reports, either by goa or v.a. oig that have never been cleaned up. yet, these people are allowed to remain there. specifically, we are going to be opening a vc.a. hospital in colorado this saturday. the individual that was responsible for the last person there in charge of the project for the v.a. standpoint in terms of construction management, that led to -- ultimately led to a billion dollars in cost overretuove overruns, five years behind schedule, i led the fight in the congress to replace the team with the army corps of

engineers. without that, i don't think this project would have been built. congress never would have had the confidence to fund those cost overruns to complete this hospital. in fact, under -- congress stripped the v.a. of its construction management authority ever to build a hospital again. and yet, this person is still there. in charge of v.a. construction facilities management. not only was she still there, your predecessor actually tried to promote her to being in charge of facilities management and contracting. that she -- at my behest or i raised the issue about her competence. she was put back down in charge of construction management. if we don't make -- if we don't clean house, no matter what the

new v.a. secretary says or does, i mean, at this level, nothing will change. so that's my concern. do you have a response to that? >> i think the response would be to point out that as you describe, it's a very difficult challenge when you are looking at changing the culture of an organization this size and as intricately designed, i guess, at this point as we look at how to restructure and bring things like construction management and other things into better alignment with our priorities, with our goals to serving veterans. that will hopefully lead to better management structure. really, what the accountability law does for us in that regard by adding accountability and putting performance as part of that. that was new. that was innovative at a degree that i don't think we all give ourselves credit enough for. that's going to allow us in the future, once we get over this -- get the accountability side

correct and start adding carefully the performance side, because that is something we have to be very cognizant of, when we talk about managers and how they manage and what their performance is, we have to do that very carefully so that we're not unfair. that is something we have to address. i think that's going to start to address some of the issues. >> i think you have around 400, i think in the department of veterans affairs at this level who run the -- who are just below the political appointees who run the day to day operations within -- and programs within the department of veterans affairs. i think you've got -- that i would hope that the new secretary would look across the board and where we have had con s consisten fa consistent failure, those people have to be removed. they have been given the

authority to remove these managers who are at the top of this bureaucracy. i want to commend you to talk to the new secretary to move forward with cleaning house. >> yes, sir. >> thank you. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i want to thank the chairman and ranking member for holding today's important meeting. when congress passed the v.a. accountability and whistleblower protection act, it was a recognition that more accountability was needed at the v.a. you are hearing that from everyone here today. however, accountability doesn't just mean increasing the number of v.a. employees who are pushed out the door. accountability means, as you had noted, creating real change in culture. ensuring that bad behavior is not repeated. management that has enabled bad behavior needs to be held accountable, just as much as low level employees who in some cases may not have been properly

trained. during your tenure, our committee has been made aware of a significant number of career employees who have had -- served under multiple secretaries. these employees have been removed, demoted or reassigned or resigned or retired after being made aware of adverse actions coming their way. it's concerning because there are a large number of personnel changes. that brings about instability in managing such a large agency. can you tell us now how many such personnel changes you are aware of for the office of the secretary personnel, including executive secretary, protocol office, center for women and minority veterans and other included staff in the time between may 30 and july 16? if not, if someone could not answer that today -- >> i want to make sure i -- i know i can address two of those. the center for women's veterans, i believe the director there

resigned last week and is now working at the center for national security. i believe she started monday. it appeared she had moved on to better things. executive secretary, we recognized that we needed to make changes at the office of the secretary level that required us to move some people. they weren't demoted or resigned. they just moved to -- one in particular moved to another job. the another moved to a gs-15 job. we're not on a path to just move things randomly. these are well planned and designed moves to better make efficiency in effecting this at our level. this is something we're encouraging leadership to do across the board, just as mr. kauffman pointed out. if you had issues with your performance or your organization's performance, do not hesitate to take action. whether that's for misconduct or

restructuring to get better performance to serve veterans. >> can you clarify that? was this for cost, performance issues or efficiency? >> this is organization. it's for organizational efficiency. we're talking about when you have an office that's not performing the way it needs to, that doesn't always mean that a person was committing this conduct of some sort. this means we're not getting the performance or the efficiency out that was organization we need. sometimes it requires a change in leadership. >> i'm sure we are going to be re-visiting this issue to see in six months what are we seeing. to be clear about what is -- how are you measuring that performance? what are you doing to ensure there's better performance? be transparent about what that is. there's a lot of concern. we are hearing a lot of back channel about morale impact. you lose a lot of senior people, that's a lot of institutional knowledge that's happening at once during a time and then

acting -- we have major pieces of legislation, major changes. to be clearing out that many people is of concern about an ability to actually effectuate change when you have people no longer there who have the institutional knowledge. you have addressed -- you are saying none were for cause? >> those two that i mentioned, neither one -- neither of them were any action taken. we're not talking about something that would be for cause. >> are you communicating with the -- with nominee wilke about any of the changes? >> no. >> do you intend to do that? it's important for him coming in to understand if confirmed about what the reasons are for these changes and what you are attempting to achieve. our oversight role is to do that. i would like you to follow up with us, what were the reasons for the changes, why have they been moved, where they moved on the major positions.

frankly, we're going to have to look with back channel of what we are hearing with perhaps different reasons that you are suggesting here today about the ration rationale for these changes. it's of concern about politicizing the high level positions. that's a deep concern. >> i think the -- >> if there's any question about whether these are loyalty concerns or other implications about why these people are being replaced, that's of deep concern. there's no place for politics in this agency. people need to be held to performance standards. when people have served under multiple secretary, if it's a performance issue, we should be made aware. should so the incoming nominee be made aware. we should to do our oversight role. thank you. >> thank the young lady for yielding. >> thank you, mr. chairman. a number of v.a. employees in my district have reached out to me. they believe issues within the v.a. would qualify them as whistleblowers. how has the office of

accountability and whistleblower office training the correct way to -- what do you actually -- how do you train them? >> how do we train them? there's awareness provided posting of signs from oig and the office of special counsel. there are requirements by statute to post how -- what is the disclosure and what do you do to submit a disclosure to those two agencies. the office of accountability and whistleblower protection had to be new, we had to educate folks what we needed. by statute we're required to produce an identifying and non-identifying form and a toll free number that's completely anonymous. those were both done within first few weeks of the office being developed. we continue to refine those. those are available to all employees and multiple different ways. we have the website that we keep updated that describes very clearly what is a disclosure to

help them. we really understood that what we had to do is listen to employees and let them talk about what their issues are. a lot of times when they feel that they can't talk to their management or supervisors, they need somebody to talk to. a lot of the cases we found, that is what caused a lot of this to fester and grow and become a bigger issue unless we addressed it at the site. we have more to do. we have trained i believe 40,000 -- you have those specific numbers. >> we have trained 2,000 hr professionals and attorneys. 40,000 supervisorsupervisors. and specifically, 690 members in the executive office as well. >> i will ask this. when somebody does come forward, who is it that actually goes to them? is it someone that has been trained from your office? is it someone that's at the site where they are at? how is that handled?

>> if they reach out to us -- you have to remember, they have multiple channel. they have congress. they have the office of inspector general. they have the office of special counsel. they can go down any one of those panels to make their disclosure. they're all equally legitimate. if they come to us through the form or the hotline or toll-free number. then we -- part of our triage folks will talk to them. if they reach out to us. if they submit the form, then we reach out to them to fully develop what their disclosure is and give them is sense of what it is -- is what they're claiming a disclosure? is it retaliation? we hand hold them through that process. because we found that's the most effective to addressing that at the lowest level. >> i'm going to shift on my other question here a little bit. prior to the hearing, the committee requested written policies and handbooks and dr h

directive s that have been sent out in putting things in place. what they received they thought were lacking to say the least. is there intent for a larger, more in-depth written policy to be put together so when someone from our office -- what's your checklist, how are you doing it and how do we know what you are doing is going to be right not only for the whistleblower but right for the agency? >> sure. i will take the criticism of that. early on we had a bias toward action, to actually start reaching out to folks and working with whistleblowers. we had quite a bit of legacy, whether it was senior leader misconduct cases, or a backlog of whistleblowers that wanted to reach out. we did focus more on the operational side. we are trying to see what we learned from a process standpoint and start to codify that. we do have work to do on creating actual regulations around what we do.

we do have pretty in-depth process maps which we're sitting down with oig to go over so they can see how we handle disclosures, which is interesting. we both have a similar mission. that is more work that we have to do. >> you mentioned earlier in your testimony -- you were talking about -- i think it was 714 hold. >> yes, sir. >> exactly how does that work? how does that get implemented? >> when a whistleblower is served in action, they are given a proposed adverse action of some sort, if they have previously disclosed to the office of special counsel, the office of inspector general -- that one is more complicated based on the transparency -- or to the office of accountability and whistleblower protection, we will reach out to the proposing official and say, you will hold this action until you hear from us. so we -- they cannot move forward with that action. we work with human resources --

>> that action could be -- my time has expired. >> removal, demotion, suspension. >> thank you. i yield back. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i think -- i agree with some of your opening comments in terms of change in culture within the v.a. and many have already spoken to that. i certainly concur with your perspective that changing culture takes time and persistence and patience. it's not ease yy to change a culture in a large organization. we also know that the v.a. is only as good as the employees who work within it. i am -- i would say, too, that the secretary -- the preceding secretary's changing culture has been one of their top priorities, without question.

we continue -- i am concerned that we still get negative reporting around the morale within the agency. and that the morale is not very good. my first question would be, since the accountability act was institutions within the v.a., do you think employee morale has increased or decreased since the accountability bill or act has been applied? >> anecdotally, where i visit on trips, i see high morale. i'm not saying that to counter yours. i think best what we will know is from our all employee survey when we will have those results and the process of getting those results back. we will share them with you all.

>> as you know, we conduct an all employee survey. it goes out to every employee and gives them an opportunity to tell us how their morale is, how things are going in the organization. this survey closed on june 25. our commitment is to have the results ready to go 45 days after its close. mid-august we will have those results ready to go. i'm already on the hook to come back and brief this on the results on what we found as a result of the survey. >> the previous morale survey, what were the results of that? >> if you use the federal employee survey and partnership for public service, v.a. was down the list of places to work. we will be comparing this year's results to those previous results to see how we have done. >> thank you. mr. o'rourke, who will be leading the v.a.'s personnel department now that we have the vacancy? >> sure. right now, the -- officially the

principal deputy assistant secretary nathan manly is leading that office. >> what is your assessment of the current leadership there and what's your plan to ensure that the office remains fully functional and able to meet the needs of the agency despite these recentdepartures? >> i don't think any office across the federal government is dependent on one person. it's important the leadership have full confidence in the leadership. we will be working with them on what our expectations are going forward. their role is very complex. as you know, we have -- the hr function throughout the veteran health and benefit administrati administration, these are massive organizations across the 50 united states, territories, foreign countries. they have a huge challenge. we will be working with them to make sure they have everything that they need to continue the

progress that we have made. we look forward to that. >> from my perspective, i think the hr department has been a very weak spot across the v.a. if they're not working efficiently and filling vacancies, then other departments are not operating at full capacity and performance. so it's a constant issue that we have debated and discussed many, many times here in the committee. being able to actually fill these vacancies in a timely manner with high quality people is really important. i do see it as a very -- the weakest link in the system. really, we need to be focused on it very much so. that just goes to again my question around your plan and what your personal involvement

will be to make sure that this -- that these -- this department is operating effectively as possible. >> along with my own personal involvement, i tasked the chief staff to be personally involved in this as well. we are taking this leadership involvement at a very serious level. >> my time is up. i yield back. >> thank you very much, mr. chairman. thank you, secretary o'rourke to review this one year in. in recent months there have been articles around the country regarding a number of v.a. physicians who were whistleblowers that made legitimate complaints. they experienced allegations of isolation, limiting access to computers, bullying, intimidation and threats against their medical licenses. so false claims to the medical boards that would impair their license. there was a case of a v.a. physician who reported

overprescribing inappropriate use of opioids. after reporting those problems, she had her practice privileges suspended and had false allegations made to her medical board. these are chilling things for your physicians to hear, both the ones you employ and the perspective ones you might employ. how does the v.a. protect these physician whistleblowers? >> we take every one of those claims very seriously. when those are -- claims of retaliation are made to the office, they're immediately addressed through the triage process. in most of my experience with those cases, there's a lot more to the story. we try to find all the story elements that we can and make a determination very quickly whether to refer that to the office of medical inspector if there's something more serious, other appropriate at investigative agencies. >> i see a number in the data that we are reading, 319 complaints in the last year of

retaliation against whistleblowers. do you think that's a correct number? do you think that's fair? >> i think in an organization like the v.a. that hasn't done what it should about defining what retaliation is, both from an educational standpoint, just the simple education standpoint, but really digging into that using examples and having every level of management hold each other accountable for that type of behavior. i have seen incredibly egregious -- i have seen claims of whistleblower retaliation that were not. >> what can -- if someone does experience legitimate retalia retaliati retaliation, what action can the v.a. take against that employee who was retoaliating against th whistleblower? >> if we in the department find that, then we will take adverse action against that supervisor,

manager. it has to be in those categories. >> can you give me a for instance? that sounds like a pretty bad thing to do. >> we removed -- >> fired? >> yeah. we removed individuals for that usually after the second type of requirement. the office of special counsel, their mandatory sentence, if you want to call it, i believe it's 14 days or more suspension. in the first instance of whistleblower retoll atialiatir >> is it important to protect the anonymity of the whistle -- >> absolutely. >> that's a key concern. if somebody does come to your office with a legitimate complaint about opioid over overprescription, this is not public knowledge that they made that complaint, less they experience this retaliation. >> it's the single highest reason given for retaliation is that they were a whistleblower. there's other claps ims of

retaliation that have do with other activity. that's been the single highest. >> protecting the witness, if you will -- witness protection program. what are we doing? let me change with a minute left. the goa report found when it came to official time, this time when employees are working -- they're doing union duties but they're on the v.a. payroll, they found that's supposed to be reported. you are supposed to know how much that time is. they go through a process. that data we think is inconsistent and unreliable. you have a new system and attendance system. is that system going to give us honest data? >> yes, sir. we're going to start fully recording everyone's time when it comes to official time. that will put 472 employees back to work. >> physicians? >> yeah. >> this will actually be able to

help us manage not just -- we talked about giving folks credit for what they need to use but -- >> when will that be rolled across the v.a.? >> we are on the hook this month for deployment. >> excellent. let me offer you -- >> thank you. >> thank you, mr. chairman. thank you, mr. o'rourke for coming to new hampshire. i appreciate our meeting and our conversation. i was left hopeful at the time, but unfortunately, my staff has yet to receive the final report from either the office of medical inspector or the office of accountability and whistleblower protection, just this past spring, the v.a. informed us that these reports were in their final stages. can you give me an update on the

status of those reports about the manchester v.a. and a time line for their release? >> i can't right now. i will get that to you immediately after this meeting. >> if you could. i know people in new hampshire are anxious to hear about the investigation of the various personnel and the protections that -- the reason i supported this legislation was to give protections to our whistleblowers. apparently, something is holding up the final report. it's important to get to the bottom of this. i want to take into account the situation in bedford, massachusetts, v.a. medical center, next to my only district, which has been the center of at least three high profile issues involving patient safety, employee safety and fraud by employees. my colleagues in the delegation and myself from new hampshire felt that the accountability act

that we're discussing today would have expedited appropriate action. but it's my understanding that at least one of the employees central to the case is still on the job. she was accused of fraud and waste. why was she not fired for shifting nearly $200,000 to her brother? do you know the status of that case and what her current employment situation is? >> i want to be careful. i believe that still is in active investigation. i am familiar with that. do you have an update where we are at? >> we have taken multiple disclosures from bedford. we spent two visits to be on the ground taking interviews -- interviewing potential whistleblowers or other employees. i know that was an oig investigation as well. we tried to make sure we didn't cross into the criminal side. i believe the fact that you are mentioning the criminal side of

that, i think there was resolution with the individual's relative. >> if could you get back to my office on that as well. the other is that, again, in bedford, a whistleblower had their allegations substantiated by the special counsel regarding asbestos contamination and patient and employee concerns about exposure. can you tell us the status of that investigation? >> i will follow up with you. >> me time is limited. i've been disappointed by assistant secretary shelby's response. we had a hearing in late june. this is in regard to the march 2018 merit system protection board study showing the v.a. has the highest rate of sexual harassment across all federal agencies. his response was dismissive of

that. i'd like to hear directly from you. do you accept the findings of that study? what are you doing about this issue? what role is the office of the -- excuse me, the whistleblower protection involved in that? what's the time line for action at the v.a. to address these allegations? >> first, don't accept that response. it's a serious issue. to reiterate that at the office of accountability and whistleblower protection, our standing policy was any claims -- i don't care where they came from. any claims of any sexual harassment or retaliation regarding that or anything required a 48-hour response from our office to have investigators on the ground on site to start those investigations. we had no tolerance for any kind of delay in any of that. i will turn it over

statistics and training on that program. >> over the past couple months, we have been looking at what do we need to make it a more robust program. additional training so employees are aware of what their avenues are for reporting. we have a strong policy. we have done recent updates to our handbook. at the prompting of eeoc when they came to look at our program. they did give us suggestions. we're implementing those in our handbook. from a training perspective -- >> is your training, is it strictly online? is there an active component by the employees? are they engaged with a trainer in a live interaction? >> the 95% training completion rate is for online training. we have begun a train the trainer program so we can do it in person. >> i think it's much more effective.

that's what we have learned here on capitol hill. we have tried to make changes. i think the other thing is that knowing -- my time is up. knowing that this is from the top down and that there's a policy of no tolerance. i apologize to the chair. i yield back. >> thank you. >> thank you, mr. chairman. thanks to the panel for being here today. there's always more than one way to skin a cat. in this case, the cat is still the cat. in this case, bad behavior is bad behavior. it can vary from embezzling money to poor patient care to you name it. the amount of different categories. the reporting system in this case needs to be standardized. because if we don't have a standardized way of reporting all the way up the chain, you

are going to have variances then a in outcomes. if you have done something heinous, should be a pretty severe outcome. if you have done something that could be considered unintentional but nonetheless was bad behavior, that's met in a different way. it's like in the military. we do have that flexibility. in this case let's talk about standardization. if we visited -- if we had all the directors here, do you think based upon your intuit, that we would hear a standardized answer from them as to how they're implementing the act as we envisioned it ? >> no. >> okay. is there an effort or a hope that we could get it to an 80%

commonality? >> yes, sir. that's why i'm short with that first answer. this organization has part of its culture, a lot of independence from medical center to medical center. those things we pointed out different typeimes. if you visit one medical center, you visited one medical center. that's not a great thing to say. it's going to require more engagement. it has required working with the senior leadership teams to address that lack of seeing things the same way and getting on the same page. >> do we have enough data now or are we getting close to having enough data that have come out to say there's really -- they have their act together here. this is an example that for those others who are more challenged in this arena to say, if you can't figure it out

yourself, try what x is doing. >> it's been a lead by example. we have several that have -- we see this mostly on the whistleblower protection side. with directors taking the lead with reinteregrating their whistleblowers that have been thorns in their sides for a long time for the right reasons. they held that back. they opened up and allowed those people to come in and it reintegrate into the organization and provide the value that they can. we have had a few that have shown what can be done. it's getting the word out to the others and then showing them or sometimes strongly encouraging them that this is the same behavior, same attitude, same way they should be treating those same issues. >> do you think that -- the three of you are sitting here at the table being held accountable by us. if we had all of the directors sitting at the table instead of you all, do you think they would feel the temperature in the seat

like you potentially do? >> i know they will this afternoon. i speak to the national counsel. i will pass that along. >> somehow several of the oversight hearings that our subcommittee has had, the lack of the sense of urgency we have sensed, it is -- it does fall back on leadership, whether it's ours as a committee here of the whole communicating that with you or then you as the leadership communicating down that -- your chain of command. up fortunately, in the end, in the end, it all boils down to the same outcome. that is, a veteran or a group of veterans doesn't get the services that they need, they require for a healthy life or whatever it happens to be to benefit them. the reason is it was put into place was to hold people

accountable. but most importantly, to protect those who saw bad behavior and felt compelled on behalf of the veterans to raise their hand and say, hey, this is wrong. i see my time is about to empire here. we will give you all the hammers you need. you need to swing them. >> thank you. >> thank you, mr. chairman. mr. o'rourke, the committee received many statements for the record from former v.a. employees about their experience after becoming whistleblowers. these experiences included problems with oawp not keeping their disclosure confidential, which resulted in severe retaliation. obviously, this is very concerning since the very purpose of the creation of oawp was intended to actually centralize the whistleblower protection in one place to

prevent such things from happening anymore. i'm just going to -- i want to point out two of the statements that happened while you were the head of oawp. the first was from a physician who stated it was difficult to get the opportunity to talk to his oawp case manager and that the case manager had not planned to interview him in reviewing his case. he said his case manager was not aware of an oig finding on his case and ultimately oawp did not to protect him from being fired. that's number one. number two, an engineer who stated oawp notified the senior officials against whom he was doing the whistleblowing about his disclosure. as a result of that, his -- he experienced retaliation that has essentially stripped him of his

job, except in name only. these seem to me to be two examples of whistleblower protection doing the exact opposite. what say you about this since you were in charge of that? >> true. we will address dr. kline first. that case predated the establishment of oawp. his case was much down the road before any of us got involved in that. his identity -- him being removed and the office of special counsel supporting that decision. the people that had initially been found for doing retaliation to him initially, there's more details that we need to go into.

they were disciplined for retaliation because they did screw up. they did not handle that the way they should have. >> disciplined -- were they removed? >> they got the mandatory retaliation penalty of 14 day suspension. >> that's the problem. the punishment for people who retaliate against whistleblowers isn't strong enough is what you are saying. >> that's the mandatory. to be honest, in that case, there was several other mitigating factors. it was almost a technicality to charge them with retaliation. >> why does it -- it seems there's a benefit of the doubt given to the people who retaliate against whist whistleblowers. you can shake your head. >> i don't agree with that. >> we have seen example after example of it. i have limited time. i want to get to the hotline. what is the status of the hotline? there's no oversight mechanism on the hotline? >> oig hotline? >> the whistleblower hotline. >> it's a toll free number.

there is oversight in the sense of oig looking at the files. >> no, no, oversight to make sure it's actually being implemented. >> it exists today. >> i know it exists. it doesn't seem to be much information out there about how people can access it. >> i will take that as a critique. it's been -- >> it's not a critique. it's a fact. >> it's communication throughout the organization. this has been a top down communication of getting the word out. we have done employee e-mails. it's consistency and having folks realize there's a new outlet. there's a hotline at oig and at osc. there's multiple waysd disclosures to be made. it's a time before everyone understands -- which one to use. it's confusing. we know this. >> how do we make it less confusing? why don't you tell us how we can

make it less confusing? >> create one. >> that's a great idea. >> you will have to take it away from the office of inspector general and office of special counsel governed by other statutes. >> your oversight -- >> i think whistleblowers should have at many outlets for making disclosures. we will work on the complexity of where that is. that requires more cooperation between the folks. >> the problem is if you flood people with -- it's how you get the information to people and how efficiently do you it and how easy you make it for people to dial a number. i think there's a need to be some more oversight in that field. thank you. i yield back. >> thank you, chairman. thank you for being here, mr. o'rourke. i'm the end user of the v.a. i get every bit of my health care through the v.a. i hold weekly office hours in

the v.a. for any veteran that wants to talk about any issue v.a. related or otherwise. i'm walking the halls there frequently. i see them. i see my fellow veterans constantly. i see the smiles on them. i see their truly heart felt gratitude when they get the care they were seeking. i also see their frustration when their care was lacking in timeliness or appropriateness. i hear about it as we all do. that's the -- in summation what we want to see. we want to see the care for every end user of the v.a. should be the best possible care it can be. it's summed up simply like that. we all agree on that. it's what we want to see. you have said in this hearing several times that you want to see a change in the culture of the v.a. i just want to give you a chance to espouse upon that.

what would you change in the culture of the v.a. if you had a wand, if you could build it up brick by brick from the beginning, what would change in the culture of the v.a. for you? what would be your tolerance for any negligence whatsoever, big or small? what would you change? that's my only question for you. i give you the next three minutes and 20 seconds to espouse upon how you would change the culture at the v.a. and what you want to see out of that. >> the context of first starting with the context of the office of accountability and whistleblower protection, i want us to acknowledge that that's where this starts. it starts with accountability. whether it is a frontline employee making a bed or whether it's a medical center director that has multiple issues going on during the day, but needs to find where he or she should put their priorities. we know that from observation. when you meet a veteran bawalki

through a hospital that passed the director and got to speak with him briefly, they know that the leadership there at that local level is engaged. the medical centers i visit, you can feel the difference when that -- when leadership is engaged in that way. the first thing is medical center directors, leadership fully engaged with their veterans, fully engaged with their staff, listening to them, raising concerns, raising issues, whether it's funding, whether it's just alignment of resources, bringing those up and down the chain of command and having that be seamless and transparent. one of the things frustrating a lot of times is between our administrations, between our staff offices, we have a lot of times where we don't work together on problems. we try to work on them individually or we just try to not think about them too much. breaking down those barriers between whether it's between i.t. and vha, working problems collaboratively with the

veteran's outcome in mind. that has been said before. it's not new. it's truly in the execution of that from the building the processes that support that, that's what would change -- i would change immediately if i could. that involves personalities, that involves people who have been doing things their whole career, getting them to move away from those well-established, well-developed opinions and the processes is difficult. it takes time. when you have a law like this that links together -- i will keep saying it. we talked about it over the weekend. why i think this is -- why i don't think we give ourselves or congress gives themselves enough credit. they put together accountability performance with this whist whistleblower protection piece which is not well defined. we get stories that come in different ways. i'm not discrediting any of them. but getting to the truth and

getting the facts is difficult. it requires people to be -- to we hold judgement and look at all the fact and mas and make determinations. why i think this is so critical is it gives us the tools as leadership to talk to other leaders and say, here is how you need to hold yourself accou accountab accountable, hold your people accountable. it not just be an empty discussion. then say i'm going to come back in six months. if you haven't done these things, i'm going to remove you. i'm going to end your federal service, which is a huge thing. it's not anything that any of us in this office ever came to lightly. when we go to a medical center director and say, your service is now over, sometimes when they have had 15, 20 years of service, that's a monumental thing to do. it's what's going to motivate them to get better, it's going to motivate them to be more accountable to their employees. you see it when you see it at a medical center. i would love to make an example

of them across the v.a. and say this is how everybody should operate. >> thank you. i yield back. >> thank you, mr. chairman. thanks for being here today with us. at the v.a., serving veterans should always come first. we have to value whistleblowers. in fact, that's why a lot of us supported the accountability act, which was a big stretch for a lot of us to give the v.a. the tools to make sure that everyone from the secretary all the way down to someone in the cafeteria is serving the veteran, not the bureaucracy. former secretary sulkin didn't think this would lead to mass firings. one accountable government board stands in the way of v.a. accountability, because before this bill senior officials could appeal decisions to the board. now they can't.

he writes that board has a history of blocking motions of firings of bad senior v.a. employees. the current chairman said he thought the bill would create a culture of accountability at the v.a. a lot of democrats signalled concerns this would be taken advantage of. i supported the bill because we thought it was the best compromise to hold the v.a. accountable to fix the culture. i want to explore the possibility -- you addressed some of the numbers. we not create a culture of fear as opposed to accountability. a culture of fear that makes the v.a. employees feel like any small mistake could mean losing their job. my colleague observed last year that senior executives are the level at which decisions end up being made, not the lower level folks. i wonder -- i refer to one more

thing. v.a. put a press release out on april 25, 2018. it's very short. it says, under v.a.'s new leadership which is firmly aligned with president trump and his priorities, the department's operations have improved in many ways. in a number of cases, employees who were wedded to the status quo and not on board with the administration's policies have now departed v.a. under what circumstances do you think that disagreeing with the administration is a fireable offense. >> i never factored in any of the actions we have taken. >> obviously, if someone at the senior -- i don't know who these individuals are. i appreciate what does that mean. people who weren't on board, why have they left? were they asked to leave? what is the context of that ? >> any time of shift the

organization, you focus on veterans, whether it's health records, folks realize maybe on their own that they don't want to be there. there's a few cases we could look at, folks in senior positions where they advocated for a different approach. then the organization took another -- went in a different direction. they felt like that wasn't a place they wanted to be anymore. that's a personal decision. >> these cases just dawned on them that i don't match this organization anymore. it's time to leave. is that what you are saying? no one was asked to leave? >> not in the case that i think you are referring to. those really end up being -- some cases we found that there really wasn't an alignment at all with where the v.a. was going. i'm surprised they stayed at long as they did. >> i understand if someone is not on board with the policies at the highest senior level, they might be asked to leave. >> i would even go even further. we're not talking about

policies. we were talking about the electronic health record, decisions made there by this committee, by the congress. and also the mission act. we have some very historic and transformative changes happening that are going to change the status quo. when that really became the reality for the organization, folks had to sit back and take stock of that and see what they wanted to do. >> how are you assuring that people aren't disciplined or fired for their own personal political belief? we had an example of that in the fbi where a gentleman was -- by all evidence was doing his job, actually was removed from the case because there was a perception he was bias. how do you parse out when people -- personal feelings about the administration might be out of line, but they're doing their job okay? are you trying to protect those people? >> when those people -- they get

the same protection as whistleblowers across the board. misconduct is not -- has a specific definition. it's not political. >> nothing to do with a person's political beliefs? my time is expired. thank you. >> thank you, mr. chairman. mr. o'rourke, let me dive in here. how many employees do you have who were hired for a specific job, duties properly outlined in the posting, who are spending 100% of their time on union activity or official time? >> it's almost 500 employees who spend 100% of their time on something other than the job they were hired to do. how do you hold those people accountable? >> i believe the recent executive orders will require all employees to go back on -- i think it's 25% is required -- the only allowable union time.

>> can you hold those employees accountable for doing a job they were hired to do if they are spending 100% of their time on union activity and not the taxpayer funded needed for serving our veterans job that they were hired to do? can you hold them accountable? >> with the -- >> currently, can you hold them accountable under the current construct? the answer is no. it's no. let's get to it. it's no. i hope to change it. i had a law that we passed out of committee. one of the most disappointments -- disappointing experiences on the committee because it was a partisan vote. didn't get one of my colleagues to vote to reduce that to 25%. i think that's reasonable. do you know what the legal standard is for administering official time? i'm not going to try to stump you. let me just read it. you can have official time. but it has to be administered in

a way that's reasonable, necessary and in the best interest of the public. do you believe somebody spending 100% of their time on union active is reasonable, necessary or in the best interest of the public? the public. >> i think i'd like to answer that question by saying i'm looking forward to getting back to serving veterans in an area for mental health is very critical. >> let me ask your colleague. do you think 100% of the time spent outside of the job they were hired to do is reasonable, necessary and in the best interest of the public? >> this is the law of the land. this is what we're supposed to dos a committee is to hold people accountable to it the laws of the land. is it reasonable? >> i can say i was hired to serve veterans, and when you're not serving veterans you need to take a hard look at what year doing. >> it's hard to serve veterans

when you were hired to do a job and you send-up spending 100% of your time -- i'm telling you anybody listening to this across this great country is scratching their head about how in the world we can create a culture of accountability when you have policies in place where somebody can spend 100% of their time on something other than what they were hired to do. and if that's acceptable, how can that be acceptable? what about you mr. nicholas? do you think it's reasonable? >> no. >> okay, thank you. it's great to get a direct answer. maybe you can file a whistle-blower complaint when you get back and you're protected, but i appreciate your honesty and the american people appreciate it. do people have a constitutional right to a job at the va? should the public sector employees be held to a different standard of accountability than

those 130 million god fearing taxpayers who work outside the american government? should there be two different standards? >> no, sir. >> do vas retain their right to sue? >> yes, sir. >> do they have a right to go choo choose to leave the va and work somewhere else if they don't like the way they were treated or performing et cetera, et cetera? >> yes, sir. >> do the 130 million people not part of the federal government system and va do they have a protection board and what's their standard of evidence when they're fired? is it substantial evidence or preponderance of evidence? which one? what's the standard by which the employee has to present their case in order to fire that employee? is it substantial evidence or preponderance of evidence? they don't have an evidence,

okay. you said in 2014 when there was proportionately lower, so there's no difference just percentage wise. s a percentage that the same percentage or trends in exists today. is there a cop-out if veterans don't perform specifically to -- is there a carve out for low wage people or high wage people or blonde haired people or blue eyed people, because i need to know if that's a loophole and we need to fix it. >> mr. chairman, your time has expired. you're recognized for five minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman.

the va has an important mission to take care of our vettens who have served our country honorably. the job is really a position of personnel. 90% of the services are personnel related. personnel management, important issue, disabled -- morale retention. we've talked about moving employees. my question to you is what have we done to retain employees? in this committee we've talked about the fact that salaries aren't competitive in many places. so what are we doing -- what do we need to do to make sure we hold onto those valued employees for the va? >> absolutely and the context it is that accountability piece, when employees want to feel safe, if they blow the whistle and don't see anything happen, maybe they just talk to their

supervisor and say there's a problem here and they don't see a response, that's an accountability issue. and before when we could have a culture, well, if i don't do something this time it's not going to make any difference and an inconsistency of an application of standards, this law provided at least some more tools to address that. it has to be our intent as leadership and then to make sure we hold each level of management accountable to then provide those employees at every level -- >> let me ask the question in a different context. you've been talking about moving employees. flip it around. retaining employees, what are we doing to make their life at the va something that people wake up and say you know what, i'm going to have a great day and go help veterans. >> i think that's where it's fairly easy.

serving veterans is the best job you can have. i even told the political appointees when we first got here you will not have a more righteous job because you get to serve veterans. i think we've got a complex system in general and it's going to require intentional work on your part, on our part. >> before you leave i'm going to follow up on some of these, but again want to work with you, try to figure out how do we make it a better place for employees to work. i meanted to follow up with questioning in the two minutes i've got. are there any employees that should really be at the va as opposed to working somewhere else? >> not that i'm aware of. let me check back to be completely accurate of that question. >> he's got a good point which is it's supposed to be dedicating 100% of your time

working and taking care of our vets. i just want to make sure are there any other employees at the va that are not actually working at the va but other departments that you've lent out to or assigned to? >> like i said i'm not aware of any and like i said we actually detailed or brought employees to help us. a great example is the lady running our dhrm program, highly skill in this area. we brought the best we could find. >> i'd like if you could go back and see, look at your notes and see if there are other folks out there that are not actually working under va that should be working under va. >> absolutely. sir, i'm not aware of any -- >> yield? >> yeah, i'm going to yield the rest. go ahead. >> you went along with the characterization that official time is unit time. you actually used the term

yourself. is it true that official can be used to conduct union business? doesn't the law prohibit that from happening? >> i believe the law does prohibit that. >> why did you refer -- the law does prohibit it, right? >> currently. >> why did you refer to the question as going along with the conflation of using union time and official time standard to the same thing. are they the same thing? >> they're commonly referred to as the same thing. >> but are they the same thing? >> i'm sure there are different legal definitions -- >> they're not the same thing. we've gotten lazy in our language. by going after union time -- after official time. official time is not union time. it's not time to conduct union business, is that correct? >> sir, i want to get --

>> is that correct? simple answer. >> they're not the same thing, but at the end of the day -- >> they're not the same thing. >> your time has expired. >> mr. chairman, i'd like to yield a mipt of my time to my colleague. >> thank you, mr. higgens. i think it is the same thing. i think we're trying to parse words up here. i think if you laid it out and i wish i had it in front of me, i wish somebody can get it and i'd read through it, you could have somebody on quote official time which i believe is time spent on union activity actually lobby congress. that's one of the issues or activity that's been applied and determined acceptable. they go to union conferences. there are all sorts of things that i would say it's union activity. i'm not saying there shouldn't be unions. i'm saying you can't spend 100% of your time if you're hired to be a physician to take care and

provide health services to a veteran and then end up spending 100% your time lobbying congress for your union, being at conferences for your union. i just don't think that's acceptable. i don't think it's reasonable, necessary or in the best interest of the public. >> i yield back to my colleague, mr. higgens. >> thank you. in the interest of bipartisanship perhaps we should consider as a round table to discuss this issue. it's passionate. we all care about the same thing. thank you for being here. do you generally recognize, sir, that this is an era of reform in the va, that the va has been a mess, man, for decades. it didn't get that way under one administration or one executive or one va committee. and this committee in a very bipartisan manner has touched my

spirit, has embraced the challenge to reform the va. but does the va get it, that this is an era of reform? >> i don't think any organization self-reforms. it's going to be what the leader of this -- >> is there a clear understanding within the culture that you describe if you could change one thing or if you could identify one thing that reflects this era of the va as an era of accountability. but i'm going to talk about is there consequence to accountability. i'm just asking you, sir, generally speaking as a man, as an american is it recognized within the va that we have to reform this thing? >> i think there's a growing number of people in the va that recognize that. >> for the record i'd like you to answer are msgb judges

providing deference to va decisions and not mitigating penalties? >> yes. >> are arbitrators following the asked time lines and are they giving deference to the penalty decision? >> not consistently. >> and what could be done or perhaps you could provide in writing for the committee what could be done -- what could we do as a body to help reinforce within the executive the arbitrator's filing to ask time line. are you familiar with confidential informants that are used across the country in law enforcement? >> yes, sir. >> and the keyword there is confidential. you know what happens to a confidential informant if the detectives or department reveals their identity? >> yes, sir. >> we pretty much find them in a ditch somewhere. whistle blowers to me are the confidential informants. and i reflect to my colleagues on both sides of the aisle regarding the protection of

whistle-blower's identities. how can there be any complaints of retaliation if we're effectively protecting the idea of whistle blowers? >> what you bring up is a great point because with retaliatory cases the identity of the whistle bleer is no longer protected. >> exactly. >> but you get to the earlier point -- >> there can be no retaliation if there's no identity exposed. yngs we should have great concern amongst the executive and this body regarding the crucial importance of the protection of whistle-blower's identities because they are in effect confidential informants. and if no more will come forward, we will dampen this reform effort if we don't place a great deal of emphasis on the protection of these identities. i'd just like to say that in cases that have been brought up by my colleagues regarding

someone has been accused of egregious behavior, are they allowed to continue on the job or are they place said on unpaid administrative leave? >> depending on their area local decisions are made -- >> you have the power to place them on unpaid administrative leave? >> i believe that was restricted and we have new rules around that. >> my time has expired. i yield back. >> you're recognized for five minutes. >> just a couple of questions about the union time, official time discussion. that time, whatever you want to call it, that is governed by the collective bargaining agreement between aig and the va, correct? >> yes. >> okay, and that collective bargaining agreement is struck between members correct. >> yes. >> and that's something members were free to contract on their own with the va, correct?

>> yes. >> and decide how they want that time to be used as part of the contract. >> this is contract we've had rolled over for so many years now? seven? >> seven years. >> no one held a gun to your head, right? it's a freely bargained contract. >> no. although to be clear we did negotiate away management rights that ewe were not supposed to do. >> sure, but the contract stands and open to the public. okay. now, you were in the military right? and in the military officers are frequently held accountable for the actions of their subordinants, right? >> yes. >> part of the military culture is people at the top are supposed to look out for people below them and even if it's not the officer's director fault they have responsibility of

people beneath them. >> yes. >> and that promotes a good culture in the military, right? >> for the most part yes. >> do you draw on your experiences from the military in leading the va? is there overlap in what you'd like to promote? >> given our customer base being veterans, yes, their expectations from what their shared experiences are. >> one thing i saw in the marine corp is that when you create that kind of culture you have leaders affirmatively go out and people below them see that and want to succeed for the person who's leading them. when you talk about creation of a culture, that's what ends up happening day to day. are you familiar with that? >> yes. >> okay. so if we just look at 2018 under the operation of this law there has been about 15 managers fired

overall. >> i think that's right. >> and it's fair to say whatever the number is there's been hundreds of house keepers, food service workers, nursing assistants fired in that same time. >> i think that's where our military analogy starts to break down a little bit because we're talking about high turn over, hour hourly wage. >> i'm just talking about people who have been fired. there's been hundreds of people in those categories. >> we also need to talk about numbers of -- >> that comparison of food numbers is accurate. >> if you look at senior leader removal there's a percentage and the change -- >> at the same time we have a lot of vacancies in those lower level positions. we've seen 46 actions against

low verse employees since the law was implemented in pittsburgh. i want to ask you if you are one of the people left who's not been fired, let's say you're a food service worker or a housekeeper, you've seen 46 of your colleagues receive adverse actions in the last year. there are 300 potential colleagues who are missing because of vacancies. that increases more of the workload for you -- >> i think we need to put that uncontext because i think there's the same number fired in the year and the same year before that. those are not easy places to hire into and with the reference preference it makes it even more difficult to fill those positions sometime. >> so from a housekeeper's vantage point they've seen 46 of their colleagues punished in the last year, 300 of them missing. their work is additional every

single day and very few if any managers have been dismissed in that time. do you think that they feel they're part of a culture where officers eat last today? >> i don't believe that's going to be the best way to describe that since we're talking about -- >> i don't think so either. mr. chairman, i yield the balance of my time. >> thank you, gentlemen, for yielding. mr. secretary, thank you for being here today. and being no firth questions first pam is dismissed and second panel is invited to the witness table. thank you for your service.

>> joining us on our second panel this morning is mr. j. david cox, the national president of the american federation of government employees. mr. cox you're now recognized for five minutes. >> thank you for the opportunity to testify today. the accountability act has turned out to be the most counter productive va law ever enacted. it has demoralized and harmed its dedicated work force a third of whom are veterans themselves. here's what so-called accountability looks like under the new law. although the va has tried to hide the fact by denying information from congress, its

own published data tells a terrible story. of the 1,036 va employees fired in 2013, only 13 were supervisors. vets were the largest number fired followed by nursing assistants, registered nurses, food service workers. these five groups make up 51% of all removals. the va has refused to provide information on veterans status, gender or race of those fired. probably to hide the disproportionate effect of this harsh law. the disproportionate impact on the va's lowest paid and veteran work force is undeniable. virtually all paid less than $35,000 annually. nursing assistant positions start at around $30,000, and

food service national postings with hourly wages as low as $11 an hour. these are the jobs of the people being fired under the new accountability law. this destructive law was enacted despite warnings from experts that mismanagement, not the union and not job protections for front line employees, was undermining the va's capability to deliver services to veterans. health care experts repeatedly presented evidence that the va health care system outperforms the private sector. before anyone points to the scandal with justification for this law, please recall that statement by phoenix va patient schedulers confirm that the waist list gaming was caused by severe shortage of providers and distorted management systems. not the union, contracts and not

inin competence of our heartless workers who couldn't be fired. we've been telling congress that chronic short staffing was causing blatant manipulation and severe access problems at va medical centers. we've been asking to reduce the claim backlog at the ra. yet thank tuesday the accountability law for essential processing physicians, veterans services representatives, rating specialist, claims examiner and claims assistant were among the largest groups of fired employees in 2018. destroying federal employee due process and union rights continue to be a choice. in the accountability law the lower standard of evidence in particular has added fuel to

fire of employing along with administrative judges of imposing a lesser penalty when the evidence doesn't support removal. before the accountability law va routinely offered an opportunity to improve performance before firing them. finally the act was supposed to improve protections for whistle blowers. but as we've warned it has had the opposite effect. it's easier than ever to fire a whistle-blower. and you can see examples how this has occurred in my written statement. i want to conclude while pointing out while the va has not moved to evict all union representatives from their offices like the social security administration did last week, no conversation about federal labor management relations should occur without addressing this. president trump is attempting to ruthlessly bust our union with his executives orders.

while many members of congress have spoken out i ask this committee ask to stop the va from behaving in a similar manner. this committee has an obligation to the democracy of which veterans risk their lives to prevent the executive branch from breaking the law and destroying federal union. thank you, mr. chairman. i'll be glad to take any questions from anyone. >> thank you, mr. cox. and just for the record when i came to the congress in 2009 va had about 250,000 employees and we were spending about $97.5 billion on benefits, cemeteries and health care. the president's ask in this budget is $192.5 billion. i'm not sure what the number is but 360,000 or 370,000 members at the va, larger than the united states navy. so we've added 100-something va

employees in the last nine years and doubled the budget. that looks to me va's management access, and i don't disagree with you. i think management is a huge part of this equation. we're not doing something right. we're not getting the bang for our buck if we're doing that. how do you and basically what evidence do you have if the accountability laws where 61.2% of the dismissales were there and now 58.6%. so the percentage actually in the 1 to 6 had gone down. not up. >> mr. chairman, i think if you would look at the fact that 15 management employees, and i heard the acting secretary refer there's only 400 and something

sesers. there are tens and thousands of managers throughout the rank and file of the va through service supervisors and many of those and 15 is grossly disproportionate. the phoenix scandal was caused in that va by management incentives which we all know was not from front line employees who were blowing the whistle because that management was trying to fire them. i'd like to add many of these veterans are returning and continue to return, and we are not making just a 50-year commitment. we're making a 60, possibly 70 year commitment to hundreds and hundreds of thousands of veterans, and the number of staff is going up. but there are hundreds and hundreds of thousands of veterans whose leaves have changed. i've suffered with a broke leg with a little while and i

know -- >> not to filibuster my time, but basically this congress, this bipartisan committee have provided resources to the va. >> as i've said we over double the amount of money where the remainder, the discretionary part of our budget here until we voted for this budget had remained flat. so we took money from other agencies and funded the va. i think it's dysgen ws to say this committee and this congress is not providing resources for the va. and i don't disagree with you, mr. cox, on management. i think that's part of our problem. let me ask you a second question. do you think there are fireable offenses that the va? do you think there are reasons you should be terminated? >> yes, sir, and i've said that every time i've come before your committee and any other

committee, there's wrongdoings, they should be fired. >> thank you. and if the law is being done properly, what would you do to change this law, if it's not being done as written and intended as i said on a vote from the united states senate? >> i would change the law to go back to the property penalties, the ability of mstb judges to mitigate penalties because due process and having those checks and balances is the way we avoid having a politicized federal work force. and now when we basically have employees who can be fired at will we have somewhat of a politicized federal work force. and there was a reason why we have msvb and other entities. >> so you would recommend going back to what we were, what we had which clearly wasn't work. and i'm not saying this is working perfectly yet. so what we had wasn't work yet. in your written statement you said the law had quote deprived

veterans who depend on the health care and services of employees of expensive training and experience without a fair chance to improve their purchase. even if i accept their premise, why is it such great employees with expensive training and experience need such time to improve their performance? >> number one many of our veteran preference of veterans that are higher, they are higher with service connected disabilities, many of them with ptsd, and many of us know that have a background, we understand the illness of ptsd, and working with those employees and also that their behavior sometimes we have to de-escalate. and i will commend some other government agencies that has realized that and tried to put in accommodating situations for people with ptsd. and we understand sometimes if you're in a wheelchair or have a

physical disability, but there are many disabilities veterans have that we need to certainly try to work with. >> my name has expired. >> thank you. mr. cox, he said one of the 'ings we've been doing to ensure the implementation of whistle blowers is listening including listening to employee views. do you feel you have been include or your members have been included in productive conversations with implementations of this law? >> i don't necessarily feel i have. and i would point out with accountability of whistle-blower protection, we're not aware of any training or any mechanism that the va has done to try to train rank and file employees. i believe i heard him say that they had trained managers. we are not aware of any training. we at one time had requested it.

the telephone number we publicized our membership and i think after that the va put out the number. >> how much time does the employees from which the veterans -- set aside -- how much time does a house keeping aid get to improve their performance as compared to a say a visiting director who not implementing the law properly? >> currently the va is saying they would only give the law 30 days and many times they're not even giving 30 days for a white house keeping aid to improve performance. historically and i worked in the va for many, many years i saw one being transferred from one va to another va with guy gantic bonuses and other things.

i know this committee certainly investigated that, and you couldn't deny those facts. >> the fixerual my colleague from pennsylvania, mr. lamb prepts about these two number of vacancies of these entry level areas in-house keeping, that's in the vacancies. but then the idea that 40, 50 people are dismissed in one year has got to have an impact on morale. go ahead, sir. >> it does have an impact on morale. in particularly when people believe that folks are fired without a due process. it's when people have their due process rights, they are offered opportunities to improve. they don't improve, and i'll agree with what the chairman said. i mean some people i believe fire themselves. that burden shifts on them. the people need to be given an

opportunity and they need to be instructed. many time there's training issues. >> have you heard any nonmanagement employees receiving training on their whistle-blower rights? >> no, sir, we haven't. >> heard him say sort of quietly, he was kind of complaining about the veteran's preference, that there's the reason why there are new vacancies at places like mitchell lamb's facility. and i've heard similar complaints made about the ability to hire sufficient house keepi keeping staff. and let us be clear house keeping staff is not an easy position. they need to be trained. it's a very important role to keep the facilities clean and keeping everything moving.

is that fair that the veteran's preference is getting in the way of hiring sufficient staff? >> sir, i believe the veterans who have served this country loyally and put it all on the line so i have the freedom of speech and all the rights everyone in this room has, the greatest checks and balances of our government, they deserve those jobs. and i will always say veterans preference ought to prevail. >> and this executive order, you know, really restricting the use of official time. could official time be used to help some of these veterans who are employed in these positions, especially the ones with pts -- in the house keeping roles, is that an official house of house keeping time? >> yes, sir, it is. >> and is that often what official time is used for? >> yes, sir, it is. >> so i think and i didn't get

time to get into the negotiated collective bargaining agreement, which provided for official time. but i'll yield back. thank you. >> thank you for yielding. >> thank you very much, mr. chairman. thank you mr. cox for joining us here today on this panel. i want to check a few numbers with you. the number of members you have in the va, i have a number, 242,450. is that roughly correct? >> we represent right at a quarter of a million. i can't give you that exact number. >> if we check the total number union dues that's $456,000 per month that the afg makes, $2 million per year. my question to you is why should the taxpayer be footing the bill for office space, for equipment supplies or employees for a

union that very clearly has the means to support all of those things by itself? >> sir, i'm not sure you're computing those numbers just out the va. i believe if you check asge's national budget it's about $80 million, and that's coming from all of our government agencies. i would also say, sir -- >> do i have the number right, $18 a month -- >> we have over a thousand locals. some of them may be less than $10 a pay period. to answer your question, in 1978 the congress of the united states passed the civil service reform act -- >> i don't want to filibuster our time here. there were almost 500 employees at the va doing 100% of the time not doing the job they were

hired to do. these are often highly skilled psychologists and physicians who are never seeing patients. does that make sense to you? >> sir, the law says we can't discriminate against anyone who chooses to run and wants to act as an union official -- >> let's talk about using their official time, you know, taxpayers are paying the salary and they're not working for the taxpayers. they're working for the union. >> that's where we will disagree. they are working for the taxpayers because in congress in 1978 gave that right of official time, and it would be up to congress to pass -- >> let's talk about the official time for a limit. the legal standard for what constitutes official time is and i'm sure you're familiar with this, reasonable, necessary and in the best interest of the public. is that in the best interest of the public to take a

psychologist or physician and put them -- it's difficult to recruit for the va. we have shortages in these positions and put them to work doing union dues? >> in 1978 when they passed the law -- >> do you think the americans at home watching this here, how do you think they react to learning we have literally hundreds of highly paid specialists in the va are aren't doing a lick of work that they were hired to do? >> and sir, they are doing work they were hired to do because congress in its wisdom pass said the law that said official time was reasonable and necessary. >> let me tell you how i think the people back in the second congressional district are spnl responding. i think they're shocked, dismayed and angry. and i think they'd demand we'd actually fix a problem like this. i don't think i can go home and walk the streets and say this is okay, don't worry about it.

these hundreds of people, we're paying them much more you'll ever make to do something that isn't even serving the va or the veterans. the chairman offered some statistics concerning the va budget and the size of the work force. i think that those speak for themselves, that those shocking numbers, in nine years we've doubled the number and added 900,000 employees to the role, and i promise you i don't think the va care has improved by any significant amount, probably just the opposite. so i'm disappointed. i would echo the comments of my colleague about reform. i think the va needs reform and i'm committed to do that. i yield back. >> thank you, mr. chairman and thank you mr. cox for being here

today. certainly your voice is important to this discussion, obviously. but to many discussions we have here in the committee. i wanted to ask you, in your testimony you also talked about the disproportionate impact on lower level employees and general level employees versus supervisors has remains the va's testimony saying this owes to a remaining roughly constant before the accountability act. can you -- do you agree with that data or do you agree with that discrepancy? >> i disagree on the fact that 15 supervisors when there are tens of thousands of management officials throughout the va and you're telling me only 15 out of

a 1,096 were managers that had discipline problems or performance problems, but yet 1,085 of 80-some rank and file people were the problem. that seems very disproportionate. let's go back to phoenix. i mean, let's talk about that. it was the fcsers, those horrible incentives in there. we could talk about va but i think you've all been there many times. >> do you as an organization collect any data on employee morale? >> more of it is antidotal from our locals. but we believe morale is very, very low because there is a real fear of people losing their union rights, losing their rights to representation. there is a great, great fear in all federal agencies often

politicized of the civil service work force. and i think that should scare every one of us to death. >> does the va reach out to you? they testified this morning they've got a survey out now and expect results 45 days from now in terms of, you know, trying to measure morale within the va. does the va reach out to you and say can you help us make sure that the employees are filling this out, this data is important to you? do they reach out to you and ask your assistance in essence to try to get really accurate data? >> since secretary mcdonald and secretary shulkin have left i have not heard a word from the va. >> thank you. so it's fair to say in this survey they talked about the results of a previous survey, public information not being very good. in this particular survey they're not reaching out to you

in anyway. >> have not received anything from them. >> also in your testimony you talked about the whistle-blower hot line, that it's not being made public. and have you heard reports from employees that it's difficult for them to find the hot line information? >> yes, ma'am, we have. again, that's -- we requested that information, shared it with our membership, and that's how they became aware. and after we did that, the va came out. and i would say the union contract is the best thing in the world to protect whistle blowers. and then we've got office of special counsel and the ig. those have done a very good job, this creating a separate entity because somewhat of a box garden or in-house. i think on both sides of this

room -- standing in the way of whistle blowers coming forward. >> have you requested the va make this whistle-blower public information. >> i haven't heard a response from them. >> you also testified that the va has essentially stopped using performance improvement plans. have you seen this across the va? >> yes, ma'am, i have. at every facility, yes. >> every facility and at sort of every level whether it's mid-level, lower level. >> i am aware of the rank and file employees. i am not aware with what they do with management employees. >> thanks. i only have a few seconds left, but i know that one of the issues they've struggled with is getting data from the va as how the accountability act is being implemented. what additional data have they

requested that's still not available? >> i will have to look to my folks because we've requested many things and have gotten very little almost no data. we want to know veteran data, gender, grievances that reveal fraud and abuse, the veteran's preference gender, ethnicity if they have it, age, all of those type things that would show patterns of treating one person different than others. >> but you're not even sure that data is being collected. >> we know it's being collected. i am sure it's being collect. the va collects lots of data. >> thank you, sir, and i yield back. >> thank you, mr. chairman. mr. cox, thank you for appearing before this committee today. i don't know if i've ever witnessed a more passionate union employee. >> i'm a passionate registered nurse that cared for veterans 23

years and loved every second of it, sir. >> and dedicated union spokesman. there's nothing wrong with that. we should all recognize we're here to service veterans and americans. we shouldn't be pro-union or anti-union. we should be pro-american and pro-veteran on both sides of the aisle and that side of your table. you've made repeated testimony regarding the numbers of va employees that have been let go. obviously there's a process by which a va employee is fired like anywhere else. but supervisors, according to your testimony sir, and i ask you respectfully, that number reflects a disparity in your opinion as compared to house keeping aids, nursing assistants, registered nurses, food service workers and medical support assistants are the largest numbers that have been

let go. would you agree that's your testimony food service workers are being let go -- >> disproportionate to the fact there are tens of thousands -- >> okay, is it your testimony it just seems like it or because it is? >> sir, because i don't have all the va's information and all the things i have to rely upon -- >> certainly you're an intelligent, gentleman, sir. we're making clear and courageous statements here today. do you think that not enough supervisors have been fired? >> i would say that would be up to the wisdom of this committee to request that data. >> i'm asking your opinion. >> in my opinion i think the va needs to make that data available, and maybe they would dispel my personal feelings or -- >> are supervisor members of your union? >> no, sir, they're not represented by our union. >> it seems to me that your general consensus is that the

existing law that was enacted -- the goal of the accountability law was to bring swifter action to va employees regardless of s seniority or lack of seniority. it seems to me you're stating the managers in place are abusing the existing law to make it more functional that more managers should be fired, more supervisors should be fired. is that not your statement, is that not your opinion? >> i think that's how you were trying to interpret it, sir. >> reinterpret it then, please. do you believe more supervisors should get fired or not? >> i think that any employee who is not doing their due diligence should be held accountable. >> if they're held accountable should there be a consequence for that? >> yes, sir with the due

process -- >> to those va employees that have been fired, have they all not in their hiring process, their training, their certifications been clarified and documented. whatever their position is within the va, have they not received expensive training or certification for their particular job? >> we would certainly hope so, but i would go back and look at the director of phoenix. >> it's a matter of law that qualifying individuals fill these positions. so the lack of a current performance improvement program, what could possibly be presented to an american man or woman that is highly qualified and certified for a position within the va, whatever that position is because veterans and americans are done with the past performance of the va.

we demand reform. this committee is committed to making it happen, so what possibly could an employee of the va having been highly trained and certified regardless of position, why if they're found to be negligent in their duties, why would they not be fired? what do they possibly learn from a two or three week performance improvement program that they didn't learn in six months or years of certification and training prior to being hired? >> well, sir, i think part of the issue is the va constantly changes its performance standards trying to crank the machine up that may not be a realistic machine to do that type of work. >> every american man and woman viewing this hearing today is thinking to themselves we bring our standards to work, man. there's no such thing as menial labor in my life. there's only menial men and

women. it's impossible for a man or woman of standard to perform a menial task because there's no such thing. there's only menial men and women. in your testimony you have repeated the mantra that the current law is not working. may i suggest to you that management of the current law -- >> you're recognized. >> mr. cox, could you explain in a little more detail some of the examples how and why people are being fired in such large numbers since the implementation? based on your testimony and plenty of information you've received it's not so simple as an employee being found negligent in the care of a particular veteran, right? there's often other reasons management is using to fire people? >> that is correct, sir.

particularly in vva on the performance side they've changed performance continuously to speed up the process and claims faster even though they're complicated to process. >> right. in fact, there were several examples detailed in your testimony where people have been fired after making whistle-blower claims, right? >> yes, sir, that happened in phoenix and other places where we had to come to the rescue. >> and you yourself were a va for 23 years. and during that time did you have experience in seeing other nurses in other jobs. >> and i would say a high number of them successfully completed it because there was additional training, understanding the va is a complex system but it's still the best health care

anyone can get in this country. and thank god the veterans are getting it. >> now, when you hear about a situation like ours in pittsburgh where 46 lower level employees have suffered adverse actions in the last year and we have 300 vacancies from your time at the vaancy, from your time at the va do you think that increases the ones that haven't been fired? >> it certainly does and jeopardizes the veterans as house keeping aides, as many people think of that as a menial task, they're responsible for the house and implementation control that's an important task at any level. >> are you familiar with people who are filling in the rn, nursing assistants, food work, cleaners, are you in touch with them on a regular basis? >> yes, sir, i am. >> how are they reacting to seeing in the last six months,

such a large number of people be fired at their level and such a small number of people be fired at the manager level. >> there's fear, a lot of fear that it'll continue until morale improves and everything is all better. and i think we all know that's not the way you get the best purchase. >> do you think that helps them do their job to take care of the veterans any better? >> no, i think it creates fear. and when you have fear in an organization you never get the best purchaerformance. >> do you think it helps them do their job better for there to be 46 employees fewer in pittsburgh -- >> no, sir, and obviously there needs to be sufficient employees to get the proper work done because at the end of the day without that being accomplished the veteran suffers. >> thank you. mr. chairman, i yield the remainder of my time. >> thank you, gentleman, for

yielding and being here with us until the end. thank you, mr. cox, once again for being here. and no further questions the second panel is dismissed. five legislative days for remarks. any closing? >> just very briefly. i'm pleased to see there are many of the majority who shares the concerns of the minority about their being adequate protections and how the awt is fulfilling or not fulfilling its role, we are i think people on both sides of the aisle are greatly concerned about this. i want to take a curious note of the fact that i did ask mr. cox a question about how well the va is making good on its professed

statement that they are listening to employees. and if that's an indication of how they're listening to union officials and union members, i cannot see that their statements are very credible. i am troubled by the disappearance of performance improvement plans among rank and file employees of the va. and the general -- i could see how there could be very several claims of a cultural fear within this organization. fear that's pervasive. fear that has issues from seeing large numbers of your fellow employees fired without due process, without being able to

tell your side of the story does create a condition of fear and does depress morale. and i am very troubled how i've seen implementations of this accountability act go forward. let me just say there were claims -- the one place of refuge that the secretary spoke with, to say, well, we're firing about the same number of people. that's not a great claim to stand on because this law was intended to improve accountability. and we're talking about firings. we're talking about people who were moved and dismissed. we're not talking about turnover in difficult jobs. we're talking about veterans here. we're talking about a work force that's been the most impacted. these are people who fought for our country, and i think we can do better. and it's -- i am just amazed at

the implementation of this law. i hoped it would be better. still cautiously optimistic with the right values at the top we can get it right. but i question whether that is occurring now. thank you, mr. chairman. i yield back. >> thank you, gentleman, for yielding. i think it was a good hearing today. one year since the accountability and protection act. obviously there's a lot of work being done to make sure the floors are protected, feeling comfortable coming out. and mr. lamb, i've been an employer it was for over 30 years in a private medical practice. and if you're short of personnel you don't fire adequately performing employees. you reward those people to stay there. so i would say if i were a manager at pittsburgh and i was having to get rid of somebody and i was already short of personnel, they'd have to do

something pretty egregious for me to get rid of them. think about that. i know the va is having a problem hiring people. i think we have a labor shortag right now. the va has to be a place that people would want to work and for the record, if we get all hung up on numbers and all of that, if people involved in the discussion had a chance to look, june 1, 2016, june 22, 2017 before the protection act, 1-6, several people were terminated. you have to look at the percentage. the number of employees the va's had has gone up but is less in the middle of seven %- 10 %. it's hypocrisy. some of those people needed to be terminated but 11-15 % went

up. the only % that went down, i think it's a reasonable thing to look at. here are the facts right here. i really appreciate everyone of you being here and i think there's a lot of work to be done and the committee is committed on a bipartisan basis. i appreciate everyone of your attendance today. was know for the comments, this meeting is adjourned.

>> tonight retiring supreme court justice anthony kennedy discusses his legacy on the high court it's from the annual ninth circuit judicial conference in anaheim california you could see it tonight at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span. >> supreme court nominee brett cavanaugh continues to meet with senators on capitol hill, follow the confirmation process on c-span leading up to the senate confirmation hearing and the vote. watch live on c-span, watch any time on c-span.org or listen with the c-span radio app. >> next, the discussion on russian meddling in the elections in the u.s., ukraine, and other countries. from