Council 220 of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), the union that represents most Social Security employees, has issued the May 2010 issue of its newsletter, UNITY. Here is a small sample from the newsletter:
The Social Security Administration has again shown there are two sets of rules: one for management officials and one for bargaining unit employees. Jared Gaspard was featured in the January, 2010 UNITY after he apparently processed about 38 phony SSI applications in order to meet agency “goals.” At the time, Gaspard was manager of the SSA office in Independence, Missouri. ...
The Office of the Inspector General (OIG) conducted an investigation, and the result was that Gaspard was moved to the Training and Development Team in the Kansas City Regional Office. ...
Despite the evidence that Gaspard falsely attested to contacting applicants and taking fake applications under their name, Kansas City Regional Commissioner Michael Grochowski recently awarded him with a Regional Commissioner’s citation award for exemplary service.
[Union President] Skwierczynski said, “Awarding Gaspard who took fake SSI applications and attested to their accuracy with a Regional commissioner’s citation is outrageous. This is especially hypo-critical since the Union is currently defending bargaining employees who have been fired for the same alleged infractions.” ...
11 comments:
Unless there is more to this story, this award is pretty outrageous. Wouldn't this conduct be criminal? If the union has proof why don't they go to the U.S. Attorney?
Yeah, right. The union blows off steam all the time with anecdotal stories like this without any rebuttal from management. It's to maintain the illusion that they're fighting for the bargaining unit when they aren't. They're too busy protecting the bigwigs, who don't have to do any real work but spend their time as union reps.
As is often the case, the union omits/distorts the facts to fit another anti-management diatribe. This man did not receive a Regional Commissioner's Citation. He was originally announced as one member of a 13 member "EEO Management Support Team" that was to receive an Equal Opportunity Achievement Award for "outstanding performance as EEO Management Investigators while at the same time maintaining regularly assigned duties for the agency." Interestingly, the booklet for the awards ceremony itself does not list him as a member of that team or as an award recipient, so it is possible his little individual trophy (there is no money involved) was revoked once top management realized he had recently been disciplined. In any case, team awards always go to all members of the team, without regard to how much or little an individual actually contributed to the team, so to call this an award for exemplary service is really stretching it.
Regardless, activity by management as described has been going on for decades, under all administrations, Republican and Democrat alike. It is part of the culture of SSA management. It is basically the most key reason to belong to the union, to have some protection from dishonest/incompetent management. It is not always management doing the deed--more often, they encourage or condone employees to do it as long as it produces statistics that make management look good, the employee gets awards, and managemenet will deny knowledge if the employee is exposed. I have seen it happen, more than once.
The Union describes actions that constitute deliberate, intentional fraud. There is no statistical reason to take "dummy" claims to pump up claims processing statistics or cause other people to do so on one's behalf. The numbers just don't work that way.
In any event, the Union's account is clearly incomplete. For example, the T16 claims system does not allow management officials to approve claims for payment. It's possible, of course, that he used other peoples' PINS to create and pay records. But, the Union doesn't explain how this was done.
For those who believe such practices are common and management protects employees who collude with them for whatever purpose, I assure you that just ain't so. I have participated in or otherwise have knowledge of numerous employee fraud investigations which resulted in the employee's removal and other criminal referrals. The Union normally defends such employees as it would any others and is legally required to do so if requested by the employee.
This manager is probably being retained pending the necessary hearings and final decison on a proposal to remove him from his position. That stuff takes time.
The OIG investigation which is criminal, not administrative, in nature is a separate matter. There is no defense to dummying claims because the only reason to do so is to pay yourself SSI checks to which you are not entitled. So, this person may not actually go to jail, but he will have to pay restitution of any payments received and a criminal fine, at a minimum. The Union would serve its members and other SSA employees better by providing more complete and accurate accounts of such events as these. IMHO. Nancy Ortiz
“The Agency can’t stand that we have this communi-cation, with 50,000 hits on our contract website in the past 30 days,” said Pam Baca, Denver regional vice president. Baca noted that the red, white and blue contract flyers issued via agency email were proving effective. Based on a survey of her region, she found 80 percent of the bargaining unit employees read the contract flyers, 75 percent of them within four hours of receipt.
Is this a joke? Who cares how many hits the web site has? What does that mean? How does Baca know what management (the agency) thinks? Maybe the employees should get back to work instead of reading propaganda.
If a "dummy" claim were taken which was denied for excess income or resources, that would be denied immediately and furnish a nice 1-day processing time. Since processing times are averages, a 1-day claim would help lower the processing times. 38 such claims would lower the average processing time considerably.
Whether this was done, I don't know.
Nancy, I'm afraid you led a very sheltered existence. Claims and other workload manipulations for statistical purposes have almost always been the norm. Comment at 7:13 is right on point. And there is still the spectre of the Arial Boatlift claims, where the Cuban refugees were given SSN's and convinced to file DIB claims that were immediately denied--even children. This is what led to the SDW cases--when claims that should have been legitimately taken were not, because they were more work for the same credit.
I believe the union being sued for slander of a manager.
I believe the union being sued for slander of a manager.
I hope AFGE is being sued as a result of the most recent dissemenation of false information. The other managers who were named in other articles should sue too. Anyone who has interaction with AFGE knows that they say whatever they want whether it's true or not. Only they and God know the reason for giving false information about managers, but it is horrible. Maybe if they'd start posting information that was accurate, the relationship between them and Astrue would improve. They seem to have a great desire for his attention. He's giving them attention alright, but not the kind of attention they want. He's ignorning them for good reason.
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