Reply to Board of Veterans Appeals (Attorney Advisor)

Forum Index » Jobs and Careers

Reply to "Board of Veterans Appeals (Attorney Advisor)"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I’m sorry I don’t believe half the stories on here about bva. Someone here has an agenda [/quote]

I'm not surprised. People who haven't worked at BVA don't know how truly terrible the place is. Don't take my word for it. Take a look at the survey below containing responses from nearly 400 BVA attorneys.

https://documentcloud.adobe.com/link/track?uri=urn%3Aaaid%3Ascds%3AUS%3A4dc55b1b-80ed-4b2c-9e0a-155be961d998#pageNum=111

The section on morale starts at p. 111/175.[/quote]
I felt severe anxiety just reading that. Wow. Anything more recent ?[/quote]

No. Trump issued a couple of executive orders that essentially destroyed the ability of federal unions to represent employees. As a result of Trump's EOs, the union at BVA was barely active. But, I do know that approximately 10 or so judges at BVA recently stepped down to become GS-14 attorneys due to BVA's plan to make judges the direct supervisors of attorneys. These judges did not want to supervise attorneys because they could not manage attorneys and review 25-30 cases a week without working extensive unpaid overtime. BVA recently posted an announcement a few weeks ago seeking to hire new judges to replace the ones who were reassigned.[/quote] sounds like the union provided no protections before trump [/quote]

Before the pandemic, the Union (AFGE 17) filed separate grievances challenging the termination of five GS-14 attorneys and won all of them at arbitration. Unfortunately, there has been a lot of backlash from rank and file Union members concerning the number of arbitrations that the Union has been involved in. You see, AFGE 17 represents all employees at VA Central Office, not just attorneys at BVA. However, ALL of the Union's arbitration cases have involved BVA attorneys. The cafeteria workers and janitors at BVA hated seeing their Union dues go towards arbitrating BVA attorney grievances. Due to this backlash, the Union has been very hesitant to represent BVA attorneys at arbitration.[/quote]

I’ve been following the BVA for over 10 years now and it’s always been a terrible environment the only difference is that the quota is larger. I even was given an offer  back in 2006 even before I knew of the problems but I declined it because it was going to be a 50% pay cut than I was getting from being a staff attorney. [/quote]

Sounds like BVA has been a terrible place to work for a long time.[/quote]

Yes, the place is rotten to the core.  It is set up to be a hostile work environment.  If you end up getting a good judge / supervisor, they can blunt some of the bad parts.  If you get a bad one, they just make everything more hostile and unpleasant. [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics