VA exempts Veterans Crisis Line employees from return-to-office requirements
The VA recently rescinded, but later reinstated, final job offers for dozens of VCL hires, after officials couldn’t find office space for them to work out of.
The Department of Veterans Affairs is granting its Veterans Crisis Line employees a full exemption to its return-to-office requirements.
Veterans Crisis Line Executive Director Christopher Watson told employees in an email Friday that VCL “has received a full exemption to the return-to-office executive order.”
“I want to express my heartfelt gratitude to each of you. Please know that we are in this together,” Watson wrote in the email.
VCL employees have told Federal News Network that most of its workforce are remote employees, and that nearby VA facilities do not have space to accommodate them.
President Donald Trump signed a memorandum on Jan. 20 calling for all teleworking and remote work employees to return to the office. The VA, in implementing that memorandum, rescinded telework and remote work agreements for about 20% of its 479,000 employees.
A VA spokesperson previously told Federal News Network that the “VA’s policy is to bring as many employees back to the office as space permits.”
The VA recently rescinded, but later reinstated, final job offers for dozens of VCL hires, after officials couldn’t find office space for them to work out of.
“We regret to inform you that we are withdrawing the current Formal Job Offer,” a VA human resources official told one hire in a recent email. “At this time, remote work authorization has been canceled. The Veterans Crisis Line is actively working to secure office space for new employees while concurrently requesting an exemption that would allow staff to work remotely.”
Erika Alexander, president of AFGE Local 518, which represents up to 1,000 Veterans Crisis Line employees, told Federal News Network last month that VCL employees in Atlanta previously worked in VA office space, but have been working remotely since April 2020. At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, VCL employees were put on mandatory telework, but were officially designated as remote workers in 2022.
“Our duty station is our home. Those of us who live in Atlanta, or even the other states, we have no office to go into,” Alexander said. Some VCL employees, she added, live two hours from the nearest VA clinic or hospital, and there is no office space nearby that’s available 24/7 to meet the crisis line’s mission.
This is a developing story and will be updated
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