WASHINGTON — Several months into his new job as Veterans Affairs secretary, Robert McDonald visited the subbasement in the agency’s main Washington office to meet with the heads of the workers union.
Bill Preston, president of AFGE Local 17, which represents VA employees who work in the Washington central office, told McDonald that if he wanted to achieve his objective of turning around the embattled agency, he would have to fire a lot of executives and managers.
” ‘Bill, I agree,’ ” Preston recalled McDonald saying that October afternoon. ” ‘I need your help. Tell me who those managers are.’ “
After a several-month internal review, Preston sent McDonald a 39-page report Thursday, detailing accounts from hundreds of VA workers who shared stories of dysfunction and insensitivity by their superiors.
If the report were a “perverse ‘how-to’ book,” Preston wrote in an e-mail to McDonald, it would be a “guide to terrible management for the purpose of systematically destroying the ability of the United States government to function effectively.”
Preston declined to give a copy of the report to The Washington Post. He said he wanted to give McDonald time to read it and respond first.
But two union sources broadly described its contents.
Nearly three dozen managers were mentioned in it, and each was the subject of at least three separate employee complaints, said the sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
They said the report alleges that there are institutional problems with how employees, many of them veterans, are treated when dealing with a range of personal or professional issues.
“Morale is very low,” one union source said. “It creates a very hostile work environment. People can’t do their work.”
VA spokeswoman Victoria Dillon would not say whether McDonald had received the report. She said he and the deputy secretary have held about 60 employee town hall meetings and more than 30 meetings with union leaders.
Next week marks one year since McDonald became secretary.
His critics say he has not done enough to clean house.
