
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 11, 1992                   TAG: 9203110302
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B-3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: LESLIE TAYLOR STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

VA, UNION LEADERS FIGHT WAR OF WORDS

The director of the Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Salem and the head of a government employee union are slugging it out in letters to the editor of the Roanoke Times & World-News.

Director Clark Graninger accused Alma Lee, president of the American Federation of Government Employees local at the Salem VA, of damaging the center's reputation with remarks about mismanagement, low employee morale and deteriorating patient care.

Graninger distributed the letter to about 50 veterans who attended a meeting with him on Sunday, before mailing a copy to the newspaper. Lee, who is in Washington, D.C., this week to meet with legislative representatives and veterans affairs officials, was notified about the letter and faxed a response to the newspaper Tuesday.

Graninger charged Lee with advancing "her personal agenda of re-election in April and possible national union office at some future date."

Lee is first executive vice president of the national federation's VA Council and a union fair-practice coordinator for the Maryland, North Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia district, in addition to being president of the local in Salem.

Elections for national union offices will be held in November. Elections for the local union will be held in April.

In her letter, Lee called Graninger's comments "a venomous personal attack upon me for my role in making public the breakdown of medical care at the veteran's hospital."

"Let me suggest that it is an effective and time-honored bureaucratic tradition to draw attention away from a problem by attacking the person who delivers the message," Lee wrote. "The life of a whistleblower is dangerous and often tormented by those exposed in the process of public disclosure."

Graninger charged that Lee's remarks were intended to "camouflage" the union's concern about competency testing and assignment of nursing staff.

"Most absurd of all are the union president's media announcements concerning quality of care at the Medical Center while opposing a reasonable and necessary quality assurance effort directed at our nursing staff."

by CNB