Board of Veterans Appeals (Attorney Advisor)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Well...well..that is not good. Anybody hear anything about how many AAs to be RIFd? How many took DRP 2.0?

I’m hearing through the grapevine that management wants to reduce attorney headcount at BVA to approximately 750 FTE. Hasn’t been confirmed.

[Anonymous]

Any idea how many there are now? Just AA, or SSCs, too?

[Anonymous]

If you're worried about being RIF'd, go to the OPM website and complete their worksheet to see what your RIF severance would be. A quick and short summary of severance is that you get one week of pay at your basic rate (i.e., just base rate without locality adjustment) for each year of federal service up to 10 years, then 2 weeks for each year after that. Employees over age 40 have a bonus multiplier applied to the total weeks of pay. No benefits are paid, and the only deduction will be taxes.

DRP 2 (assuming you are actually allowed to go on administrative leave from July 1st) will pay full salary and benefits for 13 weeks.

As between RIF and DRP2, DRP2 is the better deal for a lot of people.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Well...well..that is not good. Anybody hear anything about how many AAs to be RIFd? How many took DRP 2.0?

I’m hearing through the grapevine that management wants to reduce attorney headcount at BVA to approximately 750 FTE. Hasn’t been confirmed.

There’s 1400 attorneys alone. Your grapevine is talking about a near 50% RIF at the Board.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Well...well..that is not good. Anybody hear anything about how many AAs to be RIFd? How many took DRP 2.0?

I’m hearing through the grapevine that management wants to reduce attorney headcount at BVA to approximately 750 FTE. Hasn’t been confirmed.

There’s 1400 attorneys alone. Your grapevine is talking about a near 50% RIF at the Board.

1400 is the total for all FTEs. There are closer to 1000 attorneys. A 25% RIF FOR attorneys is still quite high though.

[Anonymous]

Any insight on when RIF letters and effective date of RIF is supposed to be?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Well...well..that is not good. Anybody hear anything about how many AAs to be RIFd? How many took DRP 2.0?

I’m hearing through the grapevine that management wants to reduce attorney headcount at BVA to approximately 750 FTE. Hasn’t been confirmed.

There’s 1400 attorneys alone. Your grapevine is talking about a near 50% RIF at the Board.

1400 is the total for all FTEs. There are closer to 1000 attorneys. A 25% RIF FOR attorneys is still quite high though.

That's a large portion of all attorneys hired in the last 2 years (350 hired in 23-24 per BVA annual report).

[Anonymous]

How do RIFs work when comparing veterans and long-tenured employees? For example, will a permanent veteran with 3 years experience be safer than a permanent non-veteran with 15 years of experience?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How do RIFs work when comparing veterans and long-tenured employees? For example, will a permanent veteran with 3 years experience be safer than a permanent non-veteran with 15 years of experience?

Based on my understanding of vet preference, I believe a permanent vet with three years of experience is much safer than a permanent non-vet with decades of experience. To RIF the vet, management will have to first RIF all of the non-vets.

[Anonymous]

Keep in mins there are different levels of Vet preference. And not all veterans get preference. A 14 year Vet with no deployments or SC disabilities have no preference at all

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How do RIFs work when comparing veterans and long-tenured employees? For example, will a permanent veteran with 3 years experience be safer than a permanent non-veteran with 15 years of experience?

I don't work at the BVA but do you all work in different divisions or are attorneys all under the same administrative unit? None of the other RIFs have considered vets or seniority because they would just cut entire offices or divisions.

[Anonymous]

From my team meetings with my judge, the number being thrown around is up to 15% cut at BVA. They aren’t touching the judges. So between attorneys and personal staff, I would think up to 15% cut of that number.

[Anonymous]

So that would mean probationary staff and newer non-veteran hires, say those with less than 5(?) years of experience, would likely be subject to RIF? If there’s approx 1000 attorneys then about 150 positions would be eliminated. According to DOGE website, 161 employees have 1 year tenure; 88 have 1-2 years tenure; 168 employees have 3-4 years tenure, 454 have 5-9 years tenure (significantly largest group); 163 have 10-14 years tenure; and 172 have 15-19 years tenure. It goes down significantly after that.
https://doge.gov/workforce?orgId=791615dd-6293-4e19-bf50-e63282fa238a

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So that would mean probationary staff and newer non-veteran hires, say those with less than 5(?) years of experience, would likely be subject to RIF? If there’s approx 1000 attorneys then about 150 positions would be eliminated. According to DOGE website, 161 employees have 1 year tenure; 88 have 1-2 years tenure; 168 employees have 3-4 years tenure, 454 have 5-9 years tenure (significantly largest group); 163 have 10-14 years tenure; and 172 have 15-19 years tenure. It goes down significantly after that.
https://doge.gov/workforce?orgId=791615dd-6293-4e19-bf50-e63282fa238a

Note, those are March 2024 numbers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:From my team meetings with my judge, the number being thrown around is up to 15% cut at BVA. They aren’t touching the judges. So between attorneys and personal staff, I would think up to 15% cut of that number.

Don’t forget, we have more than just attorney’s judges and administrative staff. We have human resources, IT, etc. I really wish we would all stop speculating until we actually have concrete statements.