Lengthy Process
The process has been lengthy, however, and currently only the National Cemetery Administration has completed the realignment. VBA is not expected to be completed until 2022 and VHA in 2024.
Legislators questioned why VHA, which contains by far the largest portion of VA’s workforce and consequently deals with the most sexual harassment complaints, will take four years to realign.
According to Pamela Powers, acting VA deputy secretary, it’s a problem of limited resources.
“We’ve got to realign 134 EEO program managers from VHA. That comes out of our general administration budget, which historically keeps getting cut,” she explained. “The reason it will take until 2024 is that we need those resources. We need to hire 134 of these folks or bring them over from VHA, which takes time.”
Another $50 million in the general administration budget is slated to be cut this year, she added.
One GAO recommendation that VA will not be following is realigning the responsibilities of its equal employment opportunity director—currently Dan Sitterly, VA’s assistant secretary for human resources and administration. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission—the federal agency that enforces civil rights laws in the workplace—recommends that whoever oversees the EEO complaint process at an agency not also be someone that executes or advises on personnel actions. Sitterly, in his current role as assistant secretary, does both.
Sitterly said that, because he is not involved in the daily management or oversight of the EEO program, there is no actual conflict. At the hearing Sitterly also pointed out that only 64% of federal agencies are in compliance on this particular issue.
“That means that 34% of us believe we have it right in a different structure,” he said. “I’m open to a different structure than we have now. But I don’t know what that looks like that doesn’t create additional conflict.”
As to how widespread the issue of sexual harassment is within VA, Powers argued that it is not a systemic issue and that the agency has improved its culture in recent years.
“I disagree with the premise that we have pervasive sexual harassment in VA. The data does not show that. There are incidents in our hospitals, and we are dealing with them,” she argued.
As for the culture within VA’s facilities, she cited recent surveys of women veterans as proof that things are improving.
“We are optimistic that our efforts are making a difference,” she told the subcommittee. “Women increasingly trust VA. In the second quarter of this fiscal year, we saw women’s trust in VA jump 10 percentage points from last year to a record high.”
One area that Powers said would be difficult to affect is the attitude of VA’s older male patient population. “We have an older generation of veterans. They served at a time when there weren’t a lot of women in uniform. I’m not making excuses for them. Certainly not. What I’m saying is I can’t change the mind of that 75 year old. But we can address [their] behavior.”
Rep. Julia Brownley (D-CA), chair of the committee’s Women Veterans Task Force, pushed back against the assumption that older veterans are not capable of change.
“Even if somebody is 75 years old, if they can see they’re acting that way, they want to fix it. But they don’t see that they’re actually acting that way,” she said.
She was backed up by Patricia Hayes, PhD, VA’s Chief of Women’s Health Services, who said that the bystander training that VA is developing addresses that very issue.
“One of the most important things we know is that, when we talk to veterans who do this behavior, the one thing that impacts them is if they understand what they’re doing isn’t just a political comment or social comment, it is disrupting the care of their sister veterans,” Hayes explained. “That’s been impactful. That’s a message that gets through to them.”