Looks like Social Security is eager for its employees to retire. From an e-mail sent to all Social Security employees:
From: ^Human Resources Internal CommunicationsSubject: Availability of Early Out Retirement for 2010—INFORMATION
Sent: Wednesday, May 26, 2010 10:58 AM
Subject: Availability of Early Out Retirement for 2010 -- INFORMATION
To: All SSA Employees
From: Reginald F. Wells
Deputy Commissioner
for Human Resources
This is to inform you that the Social Security Administration (SSA) is offering early out retirement to all employees except:
All employees in the Office of the Chief Actuary; and All employees in the Office of the Chief Information Officer.
By July 1, 2010, all eligible employees who wish to retire must advise their immediate supervisor of their intent to separate through the early out program and contact their servicing personnel office (SPO) to initiate their retirement processing. All employees must separate by August 31, 2010.
Supervisors should ensure that all employees under their supervision (including those on extended leave) receive this information.
AGE, SERVICE, AND OTHER REQUIREMENTS
To be eligible, employees must have completed 20 years of creditable service and be at least 50 years of age, or have at least 25 years of creditable service at any age. (This must include 5 years of civilian service). Employees must be serving under a non-time-limited appointment and have been continuously on SSA's rolls since November 16, 2009. In addition, employees under the Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS) must have served in a CSRS position for at least 1 year out of the 2 years immediately before retirement. This last requirement does not apply to employees under the Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS). ...
11 comments:
I don't think that's a fair inference at all. It's not like this is announcing a quota of people who must elect early retirement.
It's a nice option for employees who have saved sufficiently, and maybe came to the agency a little later in their careers.
(Someday, my day will come!)
If they want to clear the place out waive the 2 percent penalty.
This is a way to make openings for younger folks, in a relatively controlled manner. You can do better planning if you have some idea of your attrition and SSA has historical data on the rate of acceptance of early retirement. It's nice thatit's offered and for those who can take advantage of it, great. Either that helps a component stay at or below FTE ceiling or allows for fresh blood.
Historically, not that many folks take the early outs (relative to the size of the total SSA workforce) and the majority of them end up being replaced. Of the ones that do elect early outs, in my experience a significant number of them are deadwood employees who end up contributing more by retiring than they ever did working for SSA. So, everything works out in the end.
As the agency approaches the breakeven point where a larger portion of the employees are covered under FERS (Federal Employee Retirement System) instead of the old Civil Service (CSRS) system, early outs will become less and less popular.
The 2%/year reduction for under age 55 employees is nothing -- a 45 year old CSRS employee with 25 years of service will end up lower net percentage reduction than an SSA retirement beneficiary at age 62.
FERS employees, on the other hand, can't get the FERS retirement supplement until age 55. Therefore, they essentially have to do without between 1/3 to 1/4 of their retirement income until age 55 which makes early outs less popular with them than with CSRS employees.
I'm doing fine with the penalty (asked for an early out last year at 52). Further, I'm alive and not in an asylum. Win-win...
Anon #4, thanks for the explanation.
Anon #5, congrats on making your early out a win-win!
If the agency is trying to get rid of deadwood employees they should start with management. Too many chiefs and not enough indians. These individuals have meeting after meeting to justify their existence.
anon #7, you should test your own theory about the thickness of the managerial layers at ssa by querying agency staffing data at www.fedscope.opm.gov. there you will find a data cube into which you can drill and find information on ssa employees by job type, grade, etc. you will see that line-workers outnumber professional staff (in which i include computer programmers, accountants, etc.) by about 8:1...not a horrible ratio
We lost employees through early out a couple years back, and they were far from dead wood. They were skilled, competent, valuable employees who were sick of the crap that the agency was dishing out. Our FO has never recovered, and probably never will. How can the agency offer early out in the middle of staffing shortages and claims backlogs? Just the same old institutionalized mismanagement that has infected SSA for decades.
I will be early out eligible in two years, and will take whatever I can get if this current workload continues. I am not deadwood, and the fact is that the CR position in my area has been so dumbed- down where I don't even have time to do quality work anymore, because they want us to be the clerks and SR that they refuse to hire, to answer phones and assist at the front counter non-stop, with constant messages thru the day saying "where are you, go and call numbers it is backed up?" And managers that aren't even capable of making appointments on the 800 number system, just too dumb to figure it out or ask someone how to make an appointment when they actually do answer the phones! And I work in one of the offices that has zero hours of adjudication allotted, unless there is OT on Saturday! Some of us that will be electing early outs, with penalties and all, just don't like the stressful conditions, and if they can find people that like being worked like animals, with no respite, then I have an office and management staff that will need to replace me in two years!
Anon #8 Let us try a different test. Why don't we have a day where the claims and service representatives stay home. How many supervisors and managers would be able to handle the job. Not many! These same individuals are running to claims representative to ask questions. These individuals need more training. Management goes on long vacations and they are not missed since everyone in the office knows who is running the show. In our office the ratio 5:1. I believe a few of our supervisors work for the CIA since it is a mystery what they do!
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