From a July 16 letter from Witold Skwierczynski, the President of Council 220 of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) which will shortly open contract negotiations with Social Security, to Michael Astrue, Commissioner of Social Security:
Recently SSA has received a great deal of adverse publicity as a result of the Management Tango Conference in Phoenix AZ the week of July 6, 2009. ...
AFGE is outraged that you would condone, approve and participate in such an extravagant waste of taxpayer dollars. The Union is especially disturbed that SSA would spend such enormous sums of taxpayer dollars to treat managers to the comforts of a luxurious resort that featured such amenities as 8 swimming pools, 7 tennis courts, two 18 hole golf courses, a spa and 5 restaurants. ...
AFGE has discovered that the Phoenix tango is not an isolated event. Management officials have conducted or are scheduled to conduct in the near future similar management conferences for hundreds of SSA management officials at sites such as Ft. Lauderdale FL, San Francisco CA, San Antonio TX, Boston MA, Hunt Valley MD, New Orleans LA, New York City, Kansas City MO, Bellevue WA and Austin TX . SSA is apparently spending $ millions in travel and per diem costs, hotel set up fees and salaries for participants to these events. Although AFGE has not seen agendas for all these conferences, if the Phoenix meeting agenda is reflective of the conference agendas, these meetings constitute gross misuse of SSA’s appropriated funds. ... Scheduling 1 ¾ hour lunches during which managers danced and boogied on government time is outrageous.
While virtually all the management officials in the San Francisco region were in Phoenix networking, dancing and taking extended catered lunches, SSI recipients were informed that SSA could not issue emergency payments to them because there were no management officials available to approve such payments. One office even posted a sign to that effect. ...
While the Agency is demanding more resources from Congress to process increasing workloads and eliminating backlogs, you have created a situation in which SSA is now a subject of public ridicule regarding the wasteful expenditure of tax dollars for frivolous management conferences. ...
Two years ago you cancelled sending 40 year SSA employee’s travel to Baltimore to attend the awards ceremony where they were to receive their 40 year certificates. SSA had paid for these trips in the past as a reward and in appreciation of the long time service of such veteran SSA employees. You cancelled these trips to Baltimore for employees in the field to receive their awards to save money.
While i do not watch fox news on a regular basis,they were discussing this event on sunday.It seems to me that money could have been used to pay overtime,reducing the backlog.
ReplyDeleteI saw the ssa employees dancing at tax payer expense(my opinion)and
hope congress scrutinize all parts of ssa.
Does anyone know:
ReplyDeleteDoes SSA (and/or other agencies) allocate a specific amount for travel and training at the beginning of the fiscal year? And if so, is the agency then restricted to using those funds only for travel/training?
Just wondering if maybe there was some pre-allocated "use or lose" money that the agency had no authority to convert to other operating expenses or to payment of benefits.
It's July. It's use or lose time all over SSA and every other federal agency. This happens every year as Witold knows. Witold has every reason to criticize upper SSA management, let me be quick to say. But, this pretended shock and horror of travel for training is over the line. Travel and travel for training is a line item in every agency's budget--comes from OMB and most of the time it cannot be reallocated to some other use. And, let's not forget that AFGE is an organization whose local reps are on SSA's payroll. And, a bank of official time is allocated for representational functions. And, add to that their annual conventions (big time shows), and I think we have a good case for labelling AFGE's tirade here a transparently hypocrital rant.
ReplyDeletePS--I didn't know SSAers could dance. Never saw 'em do it, in 32 years. Hmm. I'll call around and see what there is to this.
All I know is in my 34 years of Federal Government employment I have been to a lot of training classes and I have never got so much as a free cup of coffee and a donut from SSA.
ReplyDeleteMust be nice to be a manager and get flown all over the place and get to shack up in nice resort hotels.
Plus if money is set up in the budget for this kind of stuff, then it shouldn't be in the next one.
Too be fair an balanced, union people on the SSA payroll need to spend more time on the job. Even John Gage should be required to do his SSA for some amount of time during the year.
First: It seems AFGE has an ax to grind against the Commissioner/Agency. This is obvious when considering term bargaining is set to begin on the next contract.
ReplyDeleteSecond: It's fairly obvious what happened. This management training is not new. The union took this opportunity to tip off a complicit reporter who happened to be at the right place at the right time with a hidden camera.
Third: When the news hits the fan, AFGE takes this prime opportunity to feign indignity and use this as proof of what the have been saying all along - the Commissioner should be removed.
Anyone with the least bit of skepticism should be able to see this for what it is.
Witold is a hack. He gets paid by SSA to be a full time Union official. He is a claims rep and hasn't taken a claim in decades. Not only that, but SSA pays for him to fly all over the country to testify in arbitrations, during which he lies. What a guy.
ReplyDeleteAlso, Witold and his union buddies, whose salaries are all taxpayer funded as noted in the previous comment, will head off to Reno for a week in late August (in-season) to AFGE's national convention at the GRAND SIERRA RESORT AND CASINO! What a hypocrite. Send in the hidden cameras. Bet the union dues payers love funding this little junket as much as I love my tax dollars paying Witold's salary while he masquerades as a claims rep.
ReplyDeleteObvious that the union is trying to ramp up public outrage over this, just in time for contract negotiations and an (allegedly) favorable Administration to tip the scales in their favor.
ReplyDeleteOn the "emergency payment" issue, all offices designate an officer in charge who can temporarily authorize these payments. If one office didn't, they screwed up, but I can envision a scenario when a small office's officer in charge had left before some SSI recipient came in at five minutes to 4:00, when they close. Big deal.
This "issue" has already dried up in the media, save for right wing blogs and Fox News. SSA got a great deal on a long-overdue regional conference. I was there and got a lot out of it, union hacks notwithstanding.
I have only only couple questions to ask. Were possible contract strategies talked about in the conference? Secondly, management loves to keep this "alleged contract" since they do very little work and receive huge bonuses such as Mr. Vaz that earned over $83000.
ReplyDeleteAt "casino night" door prizes were called "donations" and the bus rides were called "complimentary". Has Social Security changed their policy on accepting gifts?
ReplyDeleteLast Anonymous--Typically, the SF Regional Management Association (SFRMA) has offers some kind of entertainmnent to attendees one night of a big meeting. So,SFRMA probably set up the transportation to the casino and doorprizes at their separate little affair. All door prizes and hors d'oeuvres(sp) etc. are paid for in advance by SFRMA members or otherwise funded by SFRMA dues. No beverages provided, you buy your own if you want anything other than water from the fountain. Which is located outside in the lobby a half a mile away.
ReplyDeleteAs to the ethicality of receiving door prizes you pay for yourselves and transportation available to any other member of the public, I don't think there's a whole lot of wrong-doing there. There is no casino located at the hotel where the meeting was conducted. So, anyone who wanted to go to a casino in Phoenix or anywhere else would do the same thing. And, they come and get you, just like the car rental agency does.
I'm still hung up on the appalling specter of people paying for their own food and drink, their own doorprizes, and even dancing in public, not on duty time or in govt leased space. Quelle horreur! I think we have chewed this subject until nothing is left of it. Ganz genug.
I attended the conference. I never danced. I had to buy a gift as a donation to the door prizes given out. It cost me $25 and I was not reimbursed. I did not win a door prize.
ReplyDeleteI did not go to a casino (I paid for a cab to a restaurant for dinner instead) The casino did send a bus for anyone interested. They will send a free bus to anyplace that has a group of people. The casino was after hours and not a part of the training.
The majority of attendees were GS-12 employees. We are not talking about executives. Management in my office received smaller performance awards ("bonuses") than the other employees in the office. The trip to Phoenix when it is 106 degrees is not a perk or something any of us would have chosen but it was mandatory training. I saw no one at any pool or golf course. I saw no one at any pool or golf course.
The training I received was very valuable, not only for me but for the staff in my office and for the public we serve. It was done at the lowest possible cost for the government, and is an example of a successful negotiation undertaken by SSA to keep costs down.
The media attacks obviously misrepresented the training.
" Anonymous said...
ReplyDeleteAll I know is in my 34 years of Federal Government employment I have been to a lot of training classes and I have never got so much as a free cup of coffee and a donut from SSA.
Must be nice to be a manager and get flown all over the place and get to shack up in nice resort hotels."
As a retired member of management I must say that we did not get free doughnuts either - we always had to send money ahead to a staffer to pay for the refreshments at breaks and any door prizes would also have been paid for by the managers/supervisers who attended the meeting - as one person above who attended said that it cost him/her $25 for the prizes.
Nobody has answered my question. Is it correct for Manuel Vaz, who is the Boston Regional Comissioner, to receive $83272 in award money last year? Management always tries to find an excuse!
ReplyDeleteThe CEO of CIGNA (health insurance company) earned (or got paid) $24 million last year. I have no clue about this man's job performance, but let's compare..
ReplyDeleteWonder why the health insurers are so afraid of the public option?