Calling ALL VA Nurses

Current and former employees of the Department of Veterans’ Affairs (VA) who might be eligible to receive back pay and interest as a result of a decision by a United States Court of Federal Claims in Washington , DC are now able to file their claims through the website at www.VAbackpay.com. The deadline to file a claim is February 9, 2010.

Some eligible claimants may have received a post card with information about the case. A Federal Judge ordered the VA to supply a list of names and last known home addresses of current and former employees to an independent Class Action Administrator. The Class Action Administrator, Epiq Systems, Inc, mailed post cards to former employees who might be eligible and will process all claims filed in the case.

As discussed in the January issue of NARFE magazine (page 12), the court decided that the VA violated federal pay statutes by failing to pay weekend premium pay of 25% or night premium pay of 10% to certain groups of health care workers when they used annual or sick leave instead of working their regularly scheduled weekend or evening shifts. Over 2 dozen job classifications of retired VA workers in skilled health occupations, including registered nurses, licensed practical nurses, and pharmacists, are eligible to receive back pay. The case affects retired health care employees who worked at the VA at night or on weekends between September 1995 and the present. Approximately 150,000 current and former employees are eligible for the settlement.

To become eligible for payments, retired employees must file a claim form by visiting www.VAbackpay.com no later than February 9, 2010. The website also provides all of the necessary explanations and instructions. Please do not contact the Court or NARFE.

In 1980, the VA (Department of Veterans Affairs), asked Congress for a law that essentially put Title 38 nurses into a different pension system than other federal employees. Because there was no regulation to notify the nurses, the nurses continued to work until retirement, unaware that their pensions had been reduced and they missed the opportunity to have made career changes to protect their retirement income and their futures. In effect, nurses who worked part time during some of their career have not been credited with their full years of service, but rather have had their pensions reduced to less than what they expected.

ONE, the Organization for Nurses Equality, organized to find the affected nurses and restore the promised pensions through legislation. NARFE has supported this effort in publishing articles in the NARFE magazine starting in 2006. ONE succeeded, with the help of NARFE, to get full pensions restored for nurses, however, the law that Congress wrote only restores pensions to the nurses who are still working, not the retirees. The above notice from NARFE Headquarters clarifies the issue more recently.