VA Once Again Finding Ways to Hurt Its Employees

So, not only is the VA continuing to enforce mandatory overtime that hurts employees, but now they are taking away what little flexibility there was for workers. Before workers were able to do the overtime either before or after their normal shift. This would allow them to try and pick times that would be the least invasive even though this mandatory overtime is massively invasive in the first place. Now employees, starting August 18, can only do the overtime between between 6am and 8am. The work must be completed in 2 hour increments instead of being spread out throughout the week. This means that employees that have sleep issues will have their internal clocks messed with. Sleep is very important and changes to it can have huge impacts on a person's health, let alone if they already have issues with their health. This is very basic information that people that work in health organizations should have knowledge or they shouldn't be working in the health field. All these rules are just structured abuse by an employer. 

It gets even better though. The union was in the meeting and they didn't speak up to support the workers. For those of you that don't know the VA union is AFGE. They have a history of not supporting workers which I have reported on in past posts. The will not picket even though they have pictures of picketing on their website and they won't even speak up in meetings like the one where these changes were presented. Yet they are willing to take money out of the accounts of employees to pay their own salaries while they do not actively fight for the people that they claim to fight for.

With this post I am formally calling requesting that all Colorado AFGE current leaders to step down from their positions for failure to do their jobs. This includes Bernard L. Humbles who has been aware of all of the abuse that workers have been going through and has not gone to the media or called for picketing of VA sites even though he could do this. Even if the workers themselves can not strike according to the union, their families would be more then happy to show up to a picket line in support of their loved ones. It is time that AFGE gets workers that have some backbone and will not only take a pay check, but will stand up for the workers. 

Recommended Readings

-Wong, K., Chan, A. H. S., & Ngan, S. C. (2019, June 13). The effect of long working hours and overtime on Occupational Health: A meta-analysis of evidence from 1998 to 2018. International journal of environmental research and public health. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6617405/

"The result demonstrated that employees working long hours were vulnerable to suffering from diverse types of occupational health problem."

-U.S. National Library of Medicine. (2021, June 25). Long working hours and health. The Lancet regional health. Western Pacific. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8315652/

This article is good because it acknowledges that a persons' previous/current health conditions can impact the impacts that overtime can have on them. What does this mean? It means that if a person already has health conditions that working overtime can make those conditions worse and make the impacts that even a healthy person would experience be worse for the person with preexisting conditions. This article is also interesting in how since the 8 hour work day was established, that companies have been pushing and finding loop holes to get workers to work longer hours. These tactics by companies actually pushes/breaks laws that were put into place to protect workers from abuse. This once again reinforces how companies like the VA are willing to hurt their employees in any way that they can try and get away with.

-Harknett, K., & Schneider, D. (2020, February 12). Precarious work schedules and Population Health . Health Affairs Brief. Health Affairs. Accessed July 30, 2025. https://www.healthaffairs.org/do/10.1377/hpb20200206.806111/ 

          Even though this article focuses on hourly and service workers its points around 'erosion of job quality' where employers will make negative changes after people start working for them. Employees agree to work for companies with certain expectations in place and when companies do things like the VA is doing it breaks this agreement and could be seen as possible contract (verbal or written) breakage. Companies that do this need to be held accountable for doing these types of underhanded things. It is said that there is a term for this because of companies doing it. It is even sadder that in order to hold these companies accountable that the only thing that works today is taking these issues public to embarrass them. Our culture has moved away from one of accountability. 

If the VA leadership wanted to even take the smallest time to educate themselves on these topics a basic Google search would bring up for them:

and more. I could only catch so much in my picture. Picture From: https://www.google.com/search?q=Mandatory+overtime+impacts+on+health&sca_esv=d0444d30016ff5d8&sxsrf=AE3TifOkQX_Vjn1JjlL-VhVVr-2AjkENOQ%3A1753917910917&ei=1qmKaOTTN5HGkPIP6ry56Ag&ved=0ahUKEwjklq6w3eWOAxURI0QIHWpeDo0Q4dUDCBA&uact=5&oq=Mandatory+overtime+impacts+on+health&gs_lp=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-TrAbIHBjQuMjcuNbgHpirCBwkwLjE0LjIwLjLIB5cB&sclient=gws-wiz-serp

Even though this is a very basic search it would hold more information then the current VA leadership seems to know. They then could do more research and read all of the research studies, but they don't want to take the time only to find out that what they are doing is wrong and hurtful. We need actually educated people to be leading and not wannabes.  

-De Raeve, Lore, Nicole WH Jansen, and IJmert Kant. “Health Effects of Transitions in Work Schedule, Workhours and Overtime in a Prospective Cohort Study.” Scandinavian Journal of Work, Environment & Health 33, no. 2 (2007): 105–13. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40967632.

This article is good because it points out how overtime impacts different genders. Women have more general and psychological distress then men (P 6). "Moreover, it is important to pay substantial attention to employees' expressed requests for changing their worktime arrangements, as they can be an antecedent of a future change in health, as well as an effect of already changed health" (P 8).

-Baek, S.-U., Won, J.-U., & Yoon, J.-H. (2025). Gender differences in the association between long work hours, weekend work, and insomnia symptoms in a nationally representative sample of workers in Korea. Sleep Health: Journal of the National Sleep Foundation, 11(2), 191–197. https://doi-org.ccco.idm.oclc.org/10.1016/j.sleh.2024.11.002

"Previous studies have consistently shown that long work hours and weekend work are associated with short sleep duration" (introduction section). Also points out that it is known that long hours can cause depression. One of the key findings "showed that long work hours and weekend work were significantly associated with insomnia symptoms in workers" ( In Discussion Section). The article also acknowledges 'work-life conflicts'. Another key point of this article is giving workers control of their overtime so that they can do it in ways that would impact them the least. This would confirm that the limited way that the VA wants workers to do overtime is too restrictive and will actively hurt people since what little control workers used to have over the mandatory overtime has been stripped away.

-Pisljar, T., van der Lippe, T., & den Dulk, L. (2011). Health among hospital employees in Europe: A cross-national study of the impact of work stress and work control. Social Science & Medicine, 72(6), 899–906. https://doi-org.ccco.idm.oclc.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2010.12.017

This study looks specifically at healthcare workers an points out that overtime leads to poor health in workers and that this study's finding reenforces findings in other studies. This is not new information and is well known. What was interesting about this article is that it also thinks about the impact that other factors like culture and politics can have. This is super important in the US right now considering all of the craziness coming out of the White House and how leaders can be using those positions to make work life worse for employees instead of focusing on doing the right things for employees and the people they serve.