Retired Army veteran Brian McGlothan worked almost a year at the Department of Veterans Affairs hospital in Hampton, Virginia. He was less than two months away from ending his required probation in a support position, in which he makes sure the health care staff has their necessary certifications.
"I came in Tuesday morning, my normal time," McGlothan said. "My system told me that I was unauthorized. So I called IT for support, and then IT informed me that it's showing that you've been separated."
McGlothan had been fired along with roughly a dozen of his colleagues. He later found out that a letter had been sent to his work email account after his shift ended the day before.
McGlothan said he was stunned, but has since found out the process has been repeated throughout the VA system.
He fears the cuts will harm veterans' health care.
"It's going to truly suffer," he said. "And then you going to have people that are staying there, going to look to go somewhere else because they're going to know and feel that the unfairness could happen to them, too.”
More cuts are on the way. The VA has so far fired roughly 2,400 people, but VA Secretary Doug Collins announced the agency will cut back staffing to 2019 levels, eventually cutting at least 80,000 jobs, or 15 percent of total workforce.
"We regret anyone who loses their job," Collins said in a video released on social media. "But the government doesn't exist to employ people. It exists to serve people."
"VA will always fulfill its duty to provide veterans, families, caregivers, and survivors the health care and benefits they have earned," Collins said.
The firings are taking place as the number of VA patients has skyrocketed. The department estimates that 740,000 veterans have started using VA healthcare since Congress passed the PACT Act in 2022. At the Hampton VA, 15,000 new veterans started using VA care.
At a recent employee town hall, Hampton VA Acting Executive Director Walt Dannenberg said he hasn't been told how the process will work or who will be cut next.
"I will tell you that the VA has publicly stated that whatever the plan is that is currently under development, that he has committed to ensuring that whatever cuts are made do not impact care and services that are offered to our veterans," Dannenberg told the staff.
Unavoidably, many of the first round of cuts at the VA have been veterans themselves. Veterans make up roughly 30 percent of the VA workforce and the federal government workforce as a whole.
"The single group that is being most disproportionately affected, more than any other group in this country in these firings, is veterans," said Virginia Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine, who has sponsored a resolution condemning the cuts.
Senators have not been given a list of who is being let go, but the first round of firings at the VA were probationary employees - typically people who worked a year or less and do not have full civil service protection.
Less than a month before she was fired, Kydra Edey received a promotion to become a purchasing agent at the Hampton VA. The work is similar to jobs she performed on aircraft carriers over a nearly 20 year Navy career.
If Edey stayed in her original role in the Emergency Medical Services department, her job may have been safe. She became a probationary employee when she accepted the new job at a VA clinic in Chesapeake, Virginia, which is scheduled to open in April, she said.
"I just wanted to advance my career," she said. "And I actually got the chance to advance to a job I really, really like and would get up in the morning excited to go do. It just gets snatched right up under me."
Edey plans to appeal her dismissal, using an online process provided in her termination email. But she found the process so complex that she's reaching out for help from friends with more experience in federal personnel issues.
Edey says she loved helping her fellow veterans and would go back to the VA, even though more firings are on the horizon.
This story was produced by the American Homefront Project, a public media collaboration that reports on American military life and veterans.
