BECKLEY W.Va. (WVDN) – The Trump administration’s recent staffing cuts have strained the Beckley Veteran Affairs Medical Center, which was already short-staffed because of prior hiring freezes, according to an official from a union representing hospital workers.
“We’re down so many employees because we are hiring just the barest of minimum to get things done,” said Greg Bailey, local vice president for the American Federation of Government Employees 2198. “And now we’ve got people doing two and three, and some people doing four different jobs just trying to keep the facility up and running so the patients can actually get care.”
The Department of Veterans Affairs announced Feb. 13 and 24 it had dismissed a total of more 2,400 probationary employees, as a part of an effort by President Donald Trump’s administration to “make agencies more efficient, effective and responsive to the American People.” The effort is being led by tech billionaire Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency.
According to news reports on Wednesday, the president plans to cut 80,000 veterans affairs employees.
Four of those cuts so far have been at the Beckley VA Medical Center, Bailey said. Employees were also cut at the Martinsburg and Clarksburg VA Medical Centers, according to public affairs officers for the facilities.
“At VA, we are focused on saving money so it can be better spent on veteran care. We thank these employees for their service to VA,” VA Secretary Doug Collins said in one of the news releases. “This was a tough decision, but ultimately it’s the right call to better support the veterans, families, caregivers, and survivors the department exists to serve.
“To be perfectly clear: these moves will not negatively impact VA health care, benefits or beneficiaries,” Collins said. “In the coming weeks and months, VA will be announcing plans to put these resources to work helping veterans, their families, caregivers and survivors.”
According to the VA, the cuts will save the agency a combined $181 million per year to be redirected to health care, benefits and services for beneficiaries.
The Beckley VA Medical Center is a 30-bed general medical and surgical care facility and a 50-bed community living center. Bailey said Veterans Affairs had already been under a hiring freeze since August or September. When Trump took office in January, he announced a hiring freeze of all federal civilian employees.
“When you’re already at a critical shortage of nurses and administrative staff, four people really sways the scale big time,” Bailey said. “I mean, we’re already having to cut back on the amount of beds that we have available, because we can’t compete well enough to even get enough nurses to maintain the number of beds that we are supposed to have. We were already at a critical shortage before they even lost those four.”
Two of the four people who were fired from the Beckley facility were veterans and all of them had outstanding performance appraisals, Bailey said. One employee was eight hours short of having an entire year of probation, he said.
“They fired him for what they said was [his] performance wasn’t good enough,” Bailey said. “Even though…he was getting ready to get an award for the outstanding work that he had done in the department.”
All of the positions affected were low-pay administrative roles, he said.
Bailey said the four were notified that they were fired by email from an email server in Washington D.C. The email said they were fired because their performance wasn’t up to par and that they were not a fit for government work.
“Even our management tried to stop it because they weren’t even notified,” Bailey said. “The supervisors didn’t even know that the people got terminated until they reached out to their supervisor to ask them what was going on.
“So even the supervisors weren’t even aware, and they weren’t for it whatsoever,” Bailey said. “Even they were opposed to it, and tried to do everything they could to stop them all from being terminated.”
In separate statements Wednesday, public affairs officers for the Beckley, Clarksburg and Martinsburg VA medical centers said they had each dismissed a “small number” of probationary staff and that the decision would not have a negative effect on veteran health care or other services.
The cuts “will allow VA to focus more effectively on its core mission of serving Veterans, families, caregivers and survivors,” the statements read. “We cannot discuss specific personnel matters due to privacy concerns.”
A message to the Huntington VA medical center was not immediately returned Wednesday, however the Huntington Herald-Dispatch reported that it had received a statement similar to the ones released by the other VA medical centers that stated it had dismissed a “small number” of probationary staff.
Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-West Virginia, said she supported Trump’s efforts to downsize the federal government. An email to the office of Sen. Jim Justice, R-W.Va., was not immediately returned Wednesday.
“While I understand the concerns that some have regarding the administration’s efforts to look for areas where we can cut waste, fraud, and abuse, it’s just as important that we have a right-size government,” Capito said in a statement. “My focus has been and continues to be protecting our West Virginia workforce and I will monitor the DOGE efforts closely, as I have been, to fully understand the impacts and to make sure these are being conducted fairly.”
This article originally appeared on West Virginia Watch.
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