House Passes Veterans Affairs Reform, Making It Easier to Fire Employees

Agreed Col Mikel Burroughs, but one of the things that always bugged me about so many jobs and companies in the systems were the unions, and peoples belief that THEIR job was too important, they THEY are untouchable and they therefore do what they want when they want. Now I will even agree that we have some like that in the Military. In our case (my observation) they fall into 2 catagories, that super stud who has his head forward getting everything done way ahead of schedule and in top form learns all their is to learn, gets things done before the CO even knows they need to be done, or catagory 2 who I call Sgt Bilko. who is just trying to get over on everyone. Eventually Sgt Bilko gets caught out and disposed of one way or another, and yes we tolerate the other because he is the one we strive for. But one thing both are is expendable, any one of us can loose our jobs in an instant for a thousand different reasons. So it is incumbent upon us to train our troops to take over our jobs. I had one BN Cdr who I over heard him telling another officer that in his opinion, he, the LTC was the most expendable man in the unit, because there were at least 15 men that could do his job regardless of rank, (made me feel proud he said it, did not want to loose him anyway)

I have also met and deal with many of these EAGLES you talk about and they are hard workers in the trenches with us, but I have also met several who basicly spit in your eye and they say that you cannot do anything, their Union, like that is a shield, just because you have been there for 15 years should not be a bar to loosing your job. That said, I THINK the main point behind this legislation is more to try to clean out the HQ for the VA in DC, just my opinion on that point. I do know that some of the administrators are tired of some of the complaints about individuals they have working for them, but stated they cannot get rid of them for one reason or another, but if they had the choice, they would like to terminate some of these people and bring Vets in to fill the positions for the reason (their comment from a discussion I had with a few) "Vets do a much better job of taking care of other Vets, and they are not the kind on a general level, to take the first no, they will do what it takes to get what is needed done. Also, we need more Vets getting jobs, not being out of work." Like I said, this last was from a conversation a few weeks ago with some Administrators of the VA here in Albuquerque.