RNs from Chicago VA and Cook County facilities protest massive reduction in force plan

National Nurses Organizing Committee/National Nurses United (NNOC/NNU) announced today that Chicago-based registered nurses from the Jesse Brown VA Medical Center, VA Hines Health Care, and Captain James A. Lovell Federal Healthcare Center will join Cook County nurses for a rally at Jesse Brown on March 28 to demand an end to staffing cuts. The VA secretary has confirmed what was first reported in a leaked memo, that the administration is looking to cut between 72,000 to 80,000 workers from the VA. 

“We know that the VA is the best place for our veterans to receive care, and we need to ensure that we have the resources and staff available to provide high-quality, therapeutic care to every veteran who needs and wants it,” said Carolina Stewart, a registered nurse who works as a home health nurse coordinator at the Jesse Brown VA Medical Center. “We are already seeing shortages of nurses and ancillary staff, which is impeding our ability to provide safe, efficient care to our veterans, and jeopardizing patient care delivery. Our ancillary staff is critical to carrying out our mission to our veterans. Without secretaries, housekeepers, transporters, supply technicians, and other support staff, nurses are forced to take on these additional duties, and unnecessarily ripping us away from patient care. Nurses at Jesse Brown and other VAs are already experiencing increased workloads due to the staffing crisis. We need to make the VA whole, so we can carry out our mission and fulfill our promise to our veterans.”

Who: VA RNs and staff, Cook County registered nurses, and labor allies
What: Rally to demand an end to VA staffing cuts   
When: Friday, March 28    noon to 1 p.m.
Where: Jesse Brown VA, 820 S. Damen Ave., Chicago, Ill. 
Rally at the corner of Damen Ave. and Polk St.

VA Secretary Doug Collins has said the goal of the cuts is to return the VA to 2019 staffing levels. But this goal is far below well-documented staffing needs, as the VA announced last March that some 400,000 veterans enrolled in the VA in the preceding year alone. Nurses know that staffing levels for the VA must increase along with the growth of the eligible veteran population.

Cutting tens of thousands of staff would be devastating to patient care, as the VA is already critically short-staffed. According to an August 2024 Inspector General’s report, 82 percent of VA facilities have   severe shortages in nursing. 

Despite the staffing levels, nurses continue to do everything in their power to provide the highest quality of care to veterans, and studies continue to highlight the high-quality care that veterans receive through the VA. A study published in 2023 found that veterans who were hospitalized in the VA system had significantly lower 30-day mortality for heart failure and stroke compared with those in non-VA facilities. A 2022 study found that mortality rates are far lower for veterans who are treated in VA emergency rooms than for veterans who are treated in other hospitals. 

Nurses understand the VA is currently facing an existential threat as a result of the private sector siphoning billions of dollars from the system. The VA’s own “Red Team” Executive Roundtable analysis reported VA spending on private-sector care rose to $30 billion in fiscal year 2023. The authors noted the cost of this private-sector care “threaten[s] to materially erode the VA’s direct-care system and create a potential unintended consequence of eliminating choice for the millions of Veterans who prefer to use the VHA direct care system for all or part of their medical care needs.” 

“We know veterans want to be seen in the VA because they know the care is specialized towards their needs,” said Heather Fallon a registered nurse in the intensive care unit at Capt. James Lovell Federal Health Care Center. “But our staffing is not keeping up with the needs of our veterans. At our facility, we have seen wait times in the emergency room grow exponentially, and patients are being kept in the emergency room for hours, and sometimes days, because there is no one available to staff the units.” 

“We see the chaos and uncertainty caused by this current administration, and we fear what it will mean for the recruitment and retention of nurses at the VA,” said Fallon. “We must respect our veterans by respecting those who care for them, so we can ensure our veterans get the highest quality care that they were promised.”

NNOC/NNU represents nearly/more than 2,000 registered nurses in Chicago-area VA facilities.

National Nurses Organizing Committee is an affiliate of National Nurses United, the largest and fastest-growing union and professional association of registered nurses in the United States with over 225,000 members nationwide. NNU affiliates also include California Nurses Association, DC Nurses Association, Michigan Nurses Association, Minnesota Nurses Association, and New York State Nurses Association.