National Nurses United

W e've all faced union-busting employers before. But what if your boss is the federal govern- ment and the head union buster is the president of the United States? That's the situation that National Nurses Organ- izing Committee/National Nurses United's (NNOC/NNU) Veterans Health Administration (VA) nurses are battling now. Since President Donald Trump took office, VA leadership has attacked the VA workforce, dramatically cut- ting staff through the infamous "fork in the road" email and conducting massive layoffs, what the VA calls "reduction in force." The VA secretary said the system aimed to cut 30,000 jobs by the end of fiscal year 2025. Then in August 2025, the VA abruptly announced it was termi- nating its contract with VA nurses—supposedly to comply with a March 27, 2025 Trump executive order that forbade agencies doing "intelligence, counterintelligence, investigative, or national security work" from having collective bargaining agreements with employ- ees. NNOC/NNU VA filed a lawsuit in April 2025 challenging this executive order, and is working to pass the Protect America's Work- force Act, a federal bill that would restore their union protections and rights. But in the meantime, the VA nurses, who have had a union contract for more than two decades since 2004, were sud- denly being told by management that they no longer had a union, no contract, no official time or office space to handle union business, and that they couldn't conduct any union activities using work email addresses or on VA property. Soon, management eliminated auto- matic dues deduction from VA nurses' paychecks. During Trump's first term, VA management had also eliminated official time and space, and dragged its feet on signing its contract with nurses, but it did not deny the union's existence. Now the VA nurses were in totally new territory in advocating for themselves and their patients. The VA nurses we interviewed for this article, all of whom are speaking as union officers and not on behalf of the VA, did not want to sugarcoat the situation. Work has been very hard. Management has targeted leaders for discipline. Patient care has suffered due to the cuts. Morale is low. But they all also completely rejected any talk that their union no longer existed and remained strongly committed to fighting for and exercising their union rights on behalf of them- selves, their coworkers, and their patients to maintain and improve the special care they provide to veterans. "An office space is not a union," said Irma Westmoreland, RN who is not only a longtime leader in the VA division, but also secre- tary- treasurer of NNU, the national organization with which NNOC is affiliated. "The union is actually the nurses. The nurses come together to work together and fight for their patients' rights and their own rights, to better their working conditions, and to ensure safe care for patients. We can't give up those rights just because President Trump writes an executive order." Her fellow VA nurse leaders agreed. "We don't need anyone's per- mission to act as a union," said Cheryl Walden, a Clinical Call Center (CCC) RN who is vice president of the Dayton, Ohio CCC. Walden strongly believed that not continuing to organize and fight within the VA system, especially during these tough times, was shortsighted and would set the nurses behind when circumstances do change. "This administration will not be around forever. This is temporary." VA nurses are setting an inspiring example of how nurses can still fight and win even when the odds are stacked against them, and of the true meaning of what it means to be in a union. Daphne Quinn, a telemetry RN and director of the Central Iowa VA in Des Moines, sums up the VA nurse leaders' attitude: "We're playing the long game." N urses agree that it's been challenging to do union work under the VA management's new, hostile, and restrictive rules, but it can—and is—being done. And nurses are still getting results. "Them not recognizing our contract, no longer having protected union time and offices was a loss, but our union is still very present, and we're still very active," said Heather Fallon, an RN who works in the emergency department at the James Lovell VA facility in Chi- cago, Ill. "We have to be more creative in how we operate, but it's made us stronger. We have had to spend more time having face-to- face conversations with members and to build a broader base of support within our communities. We're building relationships with nurses at other VAs, and we're having conversations with our patients, with our veterans, with our communities with our point of view and moving forward in new ways." Among the first orders of business for VA nurse leaders has been establishing new communication channels with members, whether that's through collecting personal email addresses or connecting members in group chats via WhatsApp or WeChat-type applica- tions. Nurses have also had to get colleagues to rejoin as dues-paying members. They've moved meetings online, or to local cafes, restau- rants, and hotel conference rooms during off-duty hours. "Even though they took away our email, so what? We still have our union. We still have clear access to them," said Florence Uzuegbunam, a nurse practitioner who works at and is director of the Atlanta VA. "We use our WhatsApp group chat as a forum to make sure they know what's going on. We still hold our meetings. If members have issues, we have a personal email group. We have a great labor rep, and he is always available to join by Zoom, to consult after hours." All of the nurses pointed out that almost all of the fights they waged under their contract are still possible now—it's just that they are citing different reference documents or taking action under a different name. They still fill out assignment despite objection forms against unsafe staffing, they still file grievances, they still sit in on meetings where coworkers may face discipline, they still challenge managers' bad behavior. Now they just cite the VA employee hand- book when they file administrative grievances, and they represent coworkers as "peer witnesses" on their own time and don't call the meetings "Weingarten" meetings. Their complaints against man- agers may have to be filed as equal employment and opportunity cases and they may now be speaking out to Congress, the VA com- mittee, Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), A P R I L | M AY | J U N E 2 0 2 6 W W W . N A T I O N A L N U R S E S U N I T E D . O R G N A T I O N A L N U R S E 13

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