Federal Workers Are Not Okay. The Data Proves It. And Hampton VAMC Is No Exception.

A new independent survey finds federal employee engagement has collapsed to 32 out of 100 — the worst ever recorded. The Office of Personnel Management canceled the required survey. Here is what the real data shows and what it means for Hampton VA Medical Center employees.

If you’ve been feeling like something is deeply wrong at work — you’re not imagining it. A new independent survey of more than 11,000 federal employees has put a number on what Hampton VA Medical Center workers have been living through: 32 out of 100.

That is the Employee Engagement and Satisfaction score for the federal government in 2025, according to the Partnership for Public Service — a nonpartisan nonprofit that has measured federal workforce health across four administrations, including the first Trump term. In prior years, even the worst-performing agencies rarely dropped below 50. The government-wide average in 2024 was approximately 70.

This is not a dip. It is a collapse.

What Changed — And Why the Government Didn’t Want You to Know

Every year, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) is required by law to administer the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey (FEVS) — the official measure of federal workforce conditions. In August 2025, the Trump administration simply canceled it. Officials promised it would return eventually.

The Partnership for Public Service refused to let that stand. They designed and ran their own survey — the Public Service Viewpoint Survey — and the results, released this week in a report called Federal Public Service in Peril, are extraordinary.

Here is what 11,083 current federal employees told them:

  • ✅ Only 32% employee engagement and satisfaction — an average agency decline of 39 percentage points from 2024
  • ✅ 58% of employees say they are less engaged than they were last year
  • ✅ Only 7.5% of survey respondents agreed that political leaders generate high levels of motivation for the federal workforce
  • ✅ Only 1 in 4 employees believe they can report wrongdoing without retribution
  • ✅ 36.5% say their work unit provides worse quality services compared to last year

At Health and Human Services (HHS) — previously a top-5 rated agency — only 2.6% of employees said Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s political team generates high levels of motivation. At the Department of Homeland Security (DHS): 8.9%.

These are not unfavorable ratings. They are near-total rejections.

What This Means for Hampton VAMC

You don’t need a survey to know what’s happening at Hampton VA Medical Center. You’ve lived it.

You’ve watched management strip union rights and refuse to honor the Master Agreement — a federal court found in March 2026 that the VA has a legal obligation to restore those rights, and the agency is still fighting it. You’ve seen colleagues placed under investigation without clear process. You’ve been directed to take on additional patients without written policies or union notice. You’ve been told — sometimes in writing — that you have no union representation.

Only 1 in 4 federal employees believe they can report wrongdoing without retribution. How many Hampton VAMC employees would say the same?

Harvard Kennedy School professor Elizabeth Linos said it plainly: “By any historical measure, the new data released by the Partnership for Public Service is documenting the worst employee engagement and workforce sentiment I’ve ever seen for the federal government.”

That worst-ever sentiment has a name. It has a face. It works next to you.

What You Can Do

Your working conditions did not collapse on their own. They were driven by deliberate decisions — and deliberate decisions can be challenged.

  1. Know your rights. The VA-AFGE Master Agreement is still the law of your workplace, regardless of what management tells you. Federal court reaffirmed this in March 2026.
  2. Join or reactivate your membership. A union is only as strong as its membership. Every member who joins strengthens our ability to grieve, bargain, and fight back. Join here →
  3. Report violations through the union. If you’ve been denied union representation (Weingarten rights), directed to absorb unilateral workload changes, or disciplined without proper process — contact us at [email protected] or call (757) 750-9086.
  4. Document everything. Date, time, who said what. Your notes are evidence.
  5. Share this. Your coworkers are not okay either. They may not know there’s a structure fighting for them.

Sources

In solidarity, AFGE Local 2328 — Representing the employees of Hampton VA Medical Center

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