Report: VA DEI Office has a ‘Hostile, Toxic Work Environment’ Including Sexual Harassment
“At one point, a senior manager fired a mid-level manager because both men wanted to sexually harass the same employee. When a complaint was filed, a political appointee sat on it, apparently partly for racial reasons.”
The Department of Veteran Affairs (VA) DEI office is a cesspool of toxic behavior, including sexual harassment and cover-ups, according to a report from The Daily Wire.
One senior manager fired another person because he viewed him as a competition. No, not for a job. Competition to “sexually harass the same employee.”
The report comes a week after the VA sent a memo to facilities about banning the iconic WWII kiss photo.
An internal probe, which The Daily Wire did not attach, revealed the employees spent more time going after each other than helping veterans in need:
At one point, a senior manager fired a mid-level manager because both men wanted to sexually harass the same employee. When a complaint was filed, a political appointee sat on it, apparently partly for racial reasons.
The 125-page report paints a shocking portrait of the 400-person diversity office, in which employees spent much of their time filing complaints against each other instead of serving veterans. Employees engaged in “self-aggrandizing,” petty turf wars, and planned wasteful events, including one junket in which nine people travelled to dispense “diversity” training that was supposed to have been done by one person.
Deputy Assistant Secretary Harvey Johnson, the leader of the Office of Resolution Management, Diversity & Inclusion (ORMDI), retired when confronted with evidence of his department’s behavior, as well as allegations that he had swept misconduct “under the rug.”
Archie Davis, the ORMDI Chief of Staff, has been moved to a different office pending discipline after the Office of Accountability and Whistleblower Protection (OAWP) concluded that he “engaged in misconduct of a sexual nature with a subordinate employee, including while he was in her direct chain of command,” “sexted’ with a different subordinate employee,” covered up allegations against colleague, and a slew of other infractions.
The ORMDI office is in charge of harassment prevention.
In January, the House Veterans Affairs Committee voted 22-1 to subpoena the VA over sexual harassment claims exposed in November in the DEI and ORMDI office.
One of the claims alleged that a whistleblower received “numerous unwarranted sexually suggestive and aggressive messages from their senior manager over the course of a year,” including offers of unequal access to office leadership and approving paid trips.
“Allegedly, when the whistleblower did not agree to consensually engage with the senior manager, the senior manager’s attitude towards the whistleblower changed and the senior manager began allegedly bad mouthing the whistleblower to ORMDI leadership,” Bost’s office said in a statement.
Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary Denis McDonough insisted no one covered up anything in ORMDI and DEI offices.
On February 26, Chairman Mike Bost (R-IL) announced the committee would “move forward with the requested transcribed interviews with eight senior VA leaders to determine why it took 45 days and a personal call from Chairman Bost to the VA Secretary for VA to do anything.”
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Comments
What good is racehustling grift if you can’t enjoy it?
Where Da’ White Women At?
Now, that is truly offensive. And criminal.
They should all be cleaning toilets at V.A. Hospitals.
No. That is an important job that needs people who focus on their jobs.
400 jobs for the otherwise unemployable.
Until the day I die, I will not forget the elevator in the Massachusetts Statehouse — probably the last remaining manually-operated elevator in the entire state, preserved specifically to be operated by the same misshapen relic or a human being for decades, one who was (is?) certainly some politician’s nephew or other.
self-aggrandizing,” petty turf wars,
This is a description of about 80% of all government agency actions.
My wife recently retired from the state of SC and took a job at the VA where she plans on spending the next five years before retiring with fed benefits, and from the description of her coworkers fits this behavior and does not surprise me at all.
Is it legal to plan for your own retirement rather than rely on Soc Sec?
Guy I bought my relatively large ranch from lived off three full government pensions, each from relatively short hitches in the military, Interior, and state DOT. I had only one job that offered a traditional pension, and now that I’m eligible to collect it, it covers my electric bill most months (not all).
I was employed with the VA after I retired. I left in less than 1 year.
The employees spent more time trying to get out of work, than actually doing the work.
I found that I would only be able to accomplish 2 or 3 tasks in a day, because the people I worked with would only be willing to provide the support I needed to get that done.
I was called “high speed” and told to “slow my roll, Chief.” If I stepped into someone else’s perceived protected territory, I got a call from the GS-15, or EEOC with some trumped up complaint.
Absolutely no one would resolve issues face to face. Everything requires a go-between, mediator, or supervisor.
….and you have described what my efficient, prioritizing and problem-solving wife was told by her coworkers…slow down, you doin’ too much.
Hostile and toxic is part of the DEI job description.
DEI jobs should always be regarded as sinecures, not real jobs for people who really work. If you look at it that way, a huge amount of our modern world begins to make sense.
But they get to oppress other people. So not just a sinecure, a sinecure for a bully.
In competition with the FDIC when it comes to bad employee behavior.
It sounds like staffing could be reduced by at least 75% 🙂
Just like the ‘male feminists’ of ~10 years ago, who all turned out to be complete scumbags. Funny how you don’t hear that term anymore, because so many of them were found out publicly they made the term radioactive.
These ‘tolerance’ departments are universally staffed with the most disgusting, corrupt, racist jackasses you can possibly find, because they’re the only ones desperate enough to take the jobs in the first place.
Because anybody with actual talent and competence was already out there working for themselves.
But what an easy job, easy to get, government so easy to hold onto. Vs. say engineering, hard to complete the schooling, a hard job to do, not enough human contact and no personal power tricks to play (I really felt like a cog in a machine in that line of work). Studying DEI stuff in school has probably been the golden ticket for the past 20 years.
Johnson retires with full benefits. Davis gets transferred.
Meanwhile, out here in the private sector, my (old white) ass would be out on the street if there was even a WHIFF of impropriety in my dealings with underlings.
Meanwhile, veterans requiring needed treatment wait months for appointments.
Denis McDonough: “no one covered anything up.”
Everyone else to McDonough: “pull the other one, it has bells.”
These people can’t be Ceaucescu’ed fast enough.
“The 125-page report paints a shocking portrait of the 400-person diversity office, in which employees spent much of their time filing complaints against each other instead of serving veterans.”
The goal wasn’t to serve veterans anyway, at least not in an unbiased way. Glad they kept each other busy with internal foodfights and stayed out of the way of the rest of the organization.
DIE and any officers thereof are just the new version of Political Commasars. No different than one in a Soviet military unit.
Inquisitors at Inquisition department launch inquisitions at each other. Inquisitors at department shocked to find such appalling behavior.