LAS VEGAS (KLAS) — Some employees upset with the North Las Vegas VA Medical Center protested Thursday morning claiming their work conditions are not safe.
There are more than two dozen employees who have tested positive for COVID-19 at the VA Southern Nevada Health Care system, according to a spokesman.
Those cases were due to employee to employee spread but some employees of a union group are not convinced.
The union president says personal protective equipment is being re-used, believes the VA should test workers who may have been exposed to the virus and have more employees work from home.
“We’ve had a number of issues where protocols have been blown and we’ve exposed people to it,” said Robert Olson, AFGE Local 1224.
The medical director of the VA says the hospital is one of the safest places in the valley but the group AFGE Local 1224 believes otherwise.
“You can’t get onto this campus or into a building without having your temperature taken. Everyone is wearing a mask, the universal masking. We have PPE access, utilization, the aggressive cleaning and sanitation, the contact tracing, the multi-modal communication that we put out there,” said William Caron, medical director.
Caron says out of 2,800 employees, 800 are deemed eligible to work from home and 450 have are doing so.
He does say there was initially a hurdle with the technology to work from home.
