The Social Security Administration — which saw its staff shrink 6 percent last year — warned Congress last month it cannot keep up with swelling workloads as baby boomers retire and more Americans file for benefits. ...With the White House and Congress facing increasing pressure to cut the deficit — and steep cuts looming in January as part of the sequestration process — budgets are certain to get even tighter. And some experts fear Congress will continue cutting budgets without scaling back agencies’ missions, which will force some agencies to cut staffing to dangerous levels. ...“If you keep ratcheting down, at some point something breaks,” said John Palguta, vice president for policy at the Partnership for Public Service....“Unfortunately, it keeps going until we run into a [Federal Emergency Management Agency] that can’t respond to [Hurricane] Katrina, or the 9/11 Commission says part of the problem was that we didn’t have enough people in intelligence agencies to pick up on the 9/11 threat,” Palguta said. ...SSA Commissioner Michael Astrue told the Senate Finance Committee on May 17 that staffing cuts are already hurting his agency’s ability to serve the public. To deal with a nearly 4,500-employee decline in 2011, SSA had been relying on overtime and having employees stay late to interview and help members of the public.But budget cuts have forced SSA to cut out most overtime. SSA’s $11.5 billion fiscal 2012 budget is about $1 billion less than Obama requested, and about $400 million less than the agency had in fiscal 2010. As a result, Astrue said, SSA began closing field offices to the public a half-hour early each day to make sure employees finish up their interviews during their regular work hours.And Astrue fears he may be forced to cut staffing even further — between 2,500 and 3,000 employees this year and another 2,000 or more in fiscal 2013. That would force SSA to close its offices even earlier next year, he said.“I recently visited our Springfield, Mass., office, and the waiting room was filled to capacity,” Astrue said. “The office has lost 11 employees, 19 percent of its staff, in the last few years. We are doing what we can to assist this office, including implementing a video connection with another office, but few offices have excess capacity to help.”
Jun 21, 2012
Creating Two, Three, Many Katrinas?
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6 comments:
The fact that not all SSA workers at the local offices are doing their job productively, appropriately, and competently, then, SSA has a right to eliminate these non-productive workers since these workers are draining the Social Security Administration’s system, resources, and funds.
In addition, the elimination of non-productive and non-committed SSA workers has a good side to the story because it would force the current SSA workers to be more productive, more diligent, and more committed at their roles, responsibilities, and duties for serving the ultimate mission, goals, and vision of SSA and the public. In turn, the funds that tax payers paid to Social Security Tax would not have to go to waste of resources due to non-productive, non-diligent, and non-committed employees of SSA!
At the same time, SSA truly need and must train and retrain their directors, managers, employees to produce, provide, and offer more to the public and to SSA due to the fact so many things are getting out of hand, out of order, and out of harmony in SSA!
By Lifestar
How does getting rid of non-productive workers increase the productivity of other workers? I suppose it would eliminate the time the good employees use correcting the errors of the bad employees, but the decisions would still have to be done, so getting rid of staff that does the bare minimum of work just means there is even more work for the remaining staff to do.
I will say that it is wrong that it is so difficult in government to get rid of deadwood employees. It should be easier, but it is a full time job just to do it. But if a weak employee is doing 1/2 of the work of a good employee, at least that work is getting done. If they could be replaced with more competent staff, it would make sense. But with less staff, less work gets done. Not the opposite.
Lifestar, what you are missing is that the committed employees have so much work in front of them and so much pressure to clear all of that work, that corners are being cut, sometimes drastically. This does not serve the public well at all. Revision/simplification of the very complex rules would help but almost every time the management of the Agency comes up with a new rule/method, they make doing the work more difficult. That goes in spades for Congress.
Committed employees in the public's eye = no vacation.
I lost almost 2 weeks of leave last year because the only counterpart in my area was on extended maternity leave. Of course, I could not take it earlier because they did not promote her until 1 month before she went on leave so...yeah, so much for planning.
Ditching the union would be a great step though, especially in the regional centers. Most of them tend to be the people who have no clue how to work efficiently because they are busy bodies causing a panic with running to the union office every hour.
AFGE totally blows. I would pay a tidy sum to be able to switch to NTEU.
What budget cuts? There's been non-stop hiring, promotions, and bonuses in the Appeals Council.
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