Update: This story was updated on April 7 to include a statement from VA Secretary Denis McDonough.

The American Federation of Government Employees, the largest federal union, and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs reached a long-awaited agreement on a new labor contract, the union announced Thursday.

After the VA was told to stop bad-faith bargaining last month by a federal mediator, talks escalated in the weeks since to bring both sides to a tentative agreement.

“These negotiations have lasted multiple administrations, and we actually just passed the one year anniversary of contract negotiations with the current administration,” said Thomas Dargon, AFGE’s supervisory attorney on the contract, in a phone interview. “I think both teams were feeling a great deal of frustration with the lack of progress being made at the table, and we’re really pleased that we were able to accelerate our discussion in the last few weeks and reach a deal that both sides are happy with.”

Negotiations have been ongoing for nearly six years since December 2017 when the original contract first reopened. This contract is the largest public-sector collective bargaining agreement, according to the union.

AFGE has not publicly released the final terms of the new contract, as it is yet to be signed. However, a majority of the predecessor agreement will be rolled over along with revisions to VA’s hiring procedures aimed at addressing staffing shortages at the agency.

Dargon said winning an arbitration award last month helped reinforce arguments the union was making at the table and accelerated talks.

“This tentative agreement is a great step forward that will help us hire, support, retain, and onboard VA’s great public servants – which, in turn, will help us better serve our nation’s veterans,” said Secretary Denis McDonough in a statement. “A unionized VA workforce is a strong VA workforce, and we are proud to work with AFGE to continue delivering world-class care and benefits to Veterans, their families, caregivers, and survivors.”

AFGE represents roughly 291,000 VA employees. Nearly 80% of all VA public servants are bargaining union employees, according to the department.

Retention and hiring are areas of top priority for the union as it moves forward, especially with respect to burned out, overwhelmed employees who have worked on the front lines of the pandemic amid health care worker shortages.

“We’re really eager to see how these changes impact working conditions at the facility level for folks in hospitals and benefits offices around the country,” Dargon said.

Molly Weisner is a staff reporter for Federal Times where she covers labor, policy and contracting pertaining to the government workforce. She made previous stops at USA Today and McClatchy as a digital producer, and worked at The New York Times as a copy editor. Molly majored in journalism at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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