{"id":50268,"date":"2014-06-09T08:48:04","date_gmt":"2014-06-09T12:48:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=50268"},"modified":"2014-06-09T08:48:04","modified_gmt":"2014-06-09T12:48:04","slug":"special-counsel-office-investigates-whistleblower-retaliation-at-va","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=50268","title":{"rendered":"Special Counsel Office investigates whistleblower retaliation at VA"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Pinto Nag sends us a link to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nbcnews.com\/storyline\/va-hospital-scandal\/special-counsel-investigates-alleged-retaliation-against-37-va-whistleblowers-n124941\">NBC News<\/a> which reports that the US Office of the Special Counsel is investigating reports of retaliation against 37 whistleblowers in the Department of Veterans&#8217; Affairs;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>In a press release issued late Thursday, the OSC said the complaints alleging illegal retaliation were filed by employees at VA facilities in 19 states: Arkansas, Arizona, California, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Kentucky, Michigan, North Carolina, New York, Pennsylvania, Puerto Rico, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Wyoming. The OSC, which is charged with protecting federal employees and applicants from prohibited personnel practices, did not identify the facilities.<\/p>\n<p>Nick Schwellenbach, a spokesman for the OSC, told NBC News that the VA has \u201cone of the highest reprisal case rates in the federal government.\u201d <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I guess that might be a reason that the system in that department is so broken &#8211; they don&#8217;t listen to folks who notice that things need to change. And then bully them into silence;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>In the case detailed in the OSC release, the VA employee allegedly was informed after filing the complaint that a seven-day suspension would be imposed, had his or her performance evaluation lowered and was reassigned, the release said.<\/p>\n<p>The other cases involved a VA employee who reported the \u201cinappropriate and continuous use of patient restraints in violation of VA rules and procedures,\u201d and a worker who was reassigned and facing demotion after disclosing the mishandling of patient care funds, it said. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Pinto Nag sends us a link to NBC News which reports that the US Office of &hellip; <a title=\"Special Counsel Office investigates whistleblower retaliation at VA\" class=\"hm-read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=50268\"><span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Special Counsel Office investigates whistleblower retaliation at VA<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":41955,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[143],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-50268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-veterans-affairs-department"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=50268"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50268\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/41955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=50268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=50268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=50268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}