Thousands of Department of Veterans Affairs employees expecting to receive additional pay for overtime they’ve worked will have to wait until April 11 as a result of problems with the VA’s employee tracking system.
The VA’s Time and Attendance System, known as VATAS, has experienced delays for the past week, slowing down payroll processing for roughly 2% of VA employees, a department spokesman confirmed.
VA Press Secretary Peter Kasperowicz said employees will receive their regular pay as scheduled on Friday, but some who earned overtime will be affected by the software problems.
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“To summarize: 100% of VA employees will be paid their normal wages on time and 98% of VA employees will experience no impact whatsoever from this issue,” Kasperowicz said in a statement to Military.com.
Kasperowicz did not say what was causing the problems. VATAS is operated out of the VA’s Central Office in Washington, D.C., and used by roughly 480,000 employees to track overtime, time sheets, vacation requests and other leave.
The VA is at the early stages of a reduction in force that will cut the number of employees it has by roughly 80,000 to 399,957 — the number it had in 2019 at the end of President Donald Trump’s first term, according to a memo issued in early March by VA Chief of Staff Christopher Syrek.
The department already has cut 2,400 employees who had spent less than two years in their positions, although a lawsuit has temporarily paused those firings.
An unknown number of VA employees also took an offer from the federal government to resign with pay. The VA has not said how many took the deferred resignation, dubbed the “Fork in the Road” offer by the Office of Management and Budget, but 103 types of jobs were not eligible for the offer because they are considered vital to public safety and health.
The reductions are part of an overall effort by Trump and billionaire Elon Musk, through his so-called Department of Government Efficiency, to trim the size of the federal government with a goal to slash the federal deficit of $1.1 trillion.
The efforts to cut employees at the VA and across the federal government have met opposition, given that 30% of those in public service are veterans.
Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal, ranking Democrat on the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, plans to hold a series of “shadow hearings” — meetings led by Democratic lawmakers to address their ongoing concerns with the Trump administration — with the first focused on veteran firings from the federal workforce.
“Congress has an urgent oversight role in this moment of crisis for veterans,” Blumenthal said, adding that he had invited VA Secretary Doug Collins to appear at the first meeting, scheduled for April 2.
Instead, Collins has accepted an invitation to appear before the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee for a yet-to-be-scheduled hearing.
In a statement to Military.com, Committee Chairman Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., said he expects Collins to address the changes at the VA.
“When a date for the hearing is agreed to, members of the committee will have the opportunity to question Secretary Collins on workforce changes and his plans to make the VA work better for veterans,” Moran said. “I also expect the secretary to also be able to testify about the president’s budget request for the Department of Veterans Affairs.”
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