Jan 12, 2009

Furlough Of California DDS Employees?

State Disability Determination Services (DDS) offices make the determinations on Social Security disability claims at the initial and reconsideration levels. All salaries and other costs of these state DDS offices are paid by Social Security, but these are still state offices with state employees. Events that affect other state employees can affect DDS employees and complicate matters for Social Security.

The state of California has a terrible budget crisis. The governor of the state has furloughed all state employees for two days each month, beginning next month. This sort of thing has happened before in other states and almost always the DDS offices are exempted, since the state budget problems have nothing to do with the federally funded DDS. It is not clear what will happen in California this time. The governor announced that there would be no exemptions, but the Service Employees International Union is reporting that the governor's offices is saying that "certain revenue generating departments would be exempt from layoffs." I do not know whether this includes California DDS.

Can anyone at California DDS tell me what DDS employees are being told?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

4 unions are suing to stop the furloughs, including the union that covers DDS employees in CA. See sacbee.com
Keep the faith. The disabled need us working.