On Veterans Day, AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler released the following statement.
Washington DC – My dad was a proud veteran. He signed up to join the Marine Corps right after high school and was deployed straight to Vietnam. When he came home, an Electrical Workers apprenticeship program put him on the path to a good job at Portland General Electric that lifted our family into the middle class.
That’s the promise unions honor and fight for today and every day: that when veterans come home, this country will have their backs. We can never fully repay veterans for the sacrifices they have made, but we can honor their service, stand up to attacks on the freedoms they fought to defend and protect the benefits they earned.
While the labor movement is working to expand vets’ access to good jobs, health care and a secure future, the current administration is undermining us at every turn. From ripping up union contracts and firing tens of thousands of workers at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to cutting VA services and denying veterans care based on their political beliefs or marital status, the DOGE/Project 2025 agenda is jeopardizing veterans’ health, freedoms and futures.
Today and every day, the labor movement is proud to be home to more than 1 million veterans. While politicians flatter them with empty slogans, unions will continue to stand shoulder to shoulder with all veterans and deliver them the future they deserve.
How the DOGE/Project 2025 agenda is putting our veterans at risk:
- The current administration is still fighting court orders to release contingency funds to keep the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) going during the shutdown, forcing about 1.2 million veterans to go hungry.
- DOGE-driven policies are causing widespread staffing shortages at VA facilities that leave veterans waiting longer for worse care.
- The current administration signed an executive order that launched the largest act of union-busting in our history, compromising care quality and initiating a campaign of arbitrary, widespread, chaotic firings against the workforce, nearly 30% of whom are veterans themselves.
- VA Secretary Doug Collins canceled 400,000 VA workers’ union contracts—nearly one-third of whom are veterans themselves—in explicit retaliation for VA workers and their unions standing up to the administration’s illegal actions.
- Collins unlawfully fired the workers who staffed the VA crisis line, jeopardized the privacy of veterans seeking mental health services and dissolved the office that investigated racial inequities in veterans’ care.
- New guidelines from the administration allow doctors to refuse veterans treatment based on union activity, marital status or political beliefs, alienating veterans who risked their lives from getting the care they need.
- DOGE-driven policies have slashed ”life-saving” cancer trials and created new roadblocks for veterans to receive the care and benefits they earned.
