When a Social Security Administrative Law Judge holds a hearing, there's always someone helping him or her -- escorting the claimant and attorney into the hearing room, operating the recording equipment, taking notes, etc. I've heard this person referred to as a hearing recorder or monitor or reporter. Some years ago, the hearing recorder was a regular Social Security employee. Then the agency began using contract workers to do the job. The hearing recorders were paid a set amount per hearing -- as long as the claimant showed up for the hearing. When my client failed to show up for the hearing, I wasn't the only one who was disappointed! The contracting was done on an individual basis with each hearing recorder.
We've now heard that Social Security has decided to contract with a firm which will hire and manage hearing recorders to provide this service generally. I don't know how widespread this is. It covers at least all the hearing offices in North Carolina. This will start at the beginning of 2018.
The contractor that has been hired has informed the current hearing recorders in North Carolina that they can continue the work but that they'll be paid 40% less. Almost all of the hearing recorders I've talked to have told me they're not interested in taking a 40% pay cut and working for the new contractor.
Like a lot of jobs, the hearing recorder job may seem easy to perform and not that important -- until you get someone performing the job badly. I'm concerned that because the job will pay so much less that the new people hired will be unable to provide quality service. I know that at best there's going to be problems and frustration come January.
13 comments:
Charles-
Take it from a first-line OHO manager that we already, and always have, get and have gotten a less than stellar product from our HRs.
What I never understood is if you aren't going to pony up the dough for a real, verbatim court reporter, then what are you doing? We might as well save the money and just rely on the audio recording because our transcripts are (at least 99% of them) incomplete, inaccurate, etc. You could never rely on the transcript alone to document the hearing, so why even have it when the audio tells the tale perfectly? Shoot, an automated speech to text program would create a product at least as good as what we get on balance as it is.
The HRs in this neck of the woods were told by the Contractor that if they would dress appropriately and show up on time, they would get an extra dollar. Kinda of indicates what we will get.
In our region so many experienced VHRs declined to join the company, and it has had to renegotiate Ks on an ad hoc basis.
My understanding is the same issue is happening in northern California. A firm took over which offered to keep all hearing reporters on, with a 40% cut in pay.
Outsourcing never achieves better results. Workers get screwed; wages are reduced; benefits usually eliminated; the quality of work diminished; and you have no idea about the character of workers hired by the outsourcing company, i.e., are there background checks, can they be trusted, do they have a criminal history, etc.
Yet, Republicans are pushing for outsourcing of everything they have an ounce of control over, and declare with a straight face outsourcing is great for the middle and working classes. Hilarious!
9:25 - The apathy of some OHO managers is astounding. The sentiment put forth in this manager's comment is that since 99% of the transcripts are incomplete (whatever that means), then it doesn't matter how little we pay the hearing reporters or even if they're around. How about recommending something to improve the process or at the very least caring about the livelihoods of the people that you employ?
I'm a judge in an office that has transitioned to one of these mass contracts. Subsequently, good hearing reporters left for better opportunities. These people took notes, recorded the hearings, and helped in many small ways. Their replacements are untrained, often indifferent, and have already caused problems with hearings by not knowing how to operate the equipment or properly save the files. The contractors that stuck around are bitter and disillusioned because they had to take another pay cut so that their contracting agency can make a larger profit (the agency is actually paid more per hearing then the individuals contractors were paid before).
So now we're left with untrained contractors, extra work for me and office staff to deal with the issues that arise, and the government actually paying more per hearing. Plus, we were informed that the contracting agency did not have enough employees to staff all the hearings, ostensibly because so many contractors refused to take a pay cut. All for what? As far as I can tell, the only benefit is that some federal manager or admin clerk deals with fewer invoices. Or perhaps a well-connected contracting agency gets more federal contracts. In any case, the hearing process suffers. And the only excuse an "OHO manager" has to give is that it wasn't perfect to begin with. Geesh.
One of the consequences of being around so long is that you remember how things were done in the "old" days.
As noted above, hearings were previously recorded by the Hearing Assistants. The job was not just turning on the recorder, but also involved taking written notes of the testimony. As a young decision writer, I learned that these notes were invaluable in writing decisions.
But Hearing Assistants were the highest paid nonprofessionals in the office and, truth be told, sometimes had relationships with Judges when they travelled out of the office overnight to hold hearings that had become somewhat problematic.
This lead to adding staff to the office with the new clerks taking the hearing in office and having the Judge travel alone and turn the recorder on themselves. No notes other than what the Judge wrote down. Largely illegible or incomplete.
To save money on in office full time staff, OHA(its old name) started hiring reporters, largely newly retired office staff. Retired staff, as many of the existing reporters still are, have the virtue of at least understanding what these cases are about. I assume this means better notes from the hearings, but since I no longer can see those noted, i really don't know.
Imho, the reporters should be in-office staff and not one off contract employees. They could do other clerics work when not recording hearings. The money spent on the contractors, and the cost of administering that system, would be better spent on competent in-office staff.
But fat lot anyone cares for my opinion. 12:50 is probably right. A sweet deal for some connected contractor. Maximus anyone?
Does anyone know what any OHO management member does all day? Maybe instead of paying so many OHO managers at local hearing offices the agency could use the money wasted on OHO management members at hearing offices to pay hearing recorders decently. Just a thought.
after many years of hearings, and having once (30 odd years ago being the main agency Privacy Act OGC guy in Baltimore for a couple of years when it was new) it just occurred to me
what are the Privacy Act ramifications of the use of contractors? I once had to ask the recorder to leave the room after turning on the machine because she knew the claimant. Especially in "on the road" hearings or video hearings where the contractor is located where the claimant is, are/should the claimants be informed that the recorder is not a "real" SSA employee? Should they be asked to waive any objection? Contracting is one thing, the Privacy Act is another. Contract recorders were not allowed in any SSA space except the hearing room. Why are they allowed to hear somebody's life story?
I don't know the answer to any of this. Maybe I should, but it never occurred to me before, and maybe contracting somehow covers these issues.
They hearing offices have already begun using these contractor services. They are failing utterly as they are unable to provide hearing reporters. Support staff is having to be pulled in from the office and therefore unable to get work done that judges desperately need so their cases are ready for hearings. The contractors are rumored to be offering as much as $100 hearing and flying people to hearing sites without available hearing reporters in desperate effort to try to keep the contract. The claimants are already beginning to suffer as hearings are having at remote site due to no hearing reporter being available. Stayton I’m sure there will be more to come and An ever larger growing backlog.... The hearing office staff and management teams or scrambling to try and get hearings covered. The judges are upset that the claimants are not going to have their hearings that they have waited so long to get. Upper management in Baltimore appears to be trying to continue on with this ridiculous project but they will blame the ALJs for the backlog rather than their project which already appears to be resulting in hearings being canceled all over the country.
I wonder how much of that 40% pay cut winds up in the pockets of the contractor? Typical outsourcing. Government saves some money but the money comes from the wages of the workers. Meanwhile the contractor gets a handsome profit and the workers get less pay and fewer benefits. So one person benefits greatly, hundreds lose big, and the taxpayers savings is miniscule. And the job isn't done any better, and probably worse, than if done by career government employees.
@8:13AM with regard to outsourcing stated, in part, “. . . the taxpayers savings is minuscule.”
No, the taxpayers end up in the hole. Because the contract Reporters are terrible and their work product useless, the extra time it is going to take the ALJ’s, and especially the decision writers, to listen to the entire hearing in order to obtain VE, ME, and Claimant testimony, is going to eat up any perceived savings by leaps and bounds. Look at salaries ALJ’s and decision writers are paid; the extra hours it is going to take them to do their work in a legally sufficient manner; and how the end result is going to cause the backlog to further grow necessitating hiring more employees, and the mathematical conclusion is OHO is much deeper in the hole any way you spin it.
The problem is with Managements inability, and frankly, incompetence, to manage the Hearing Offices. It is imperative OHO have top level Management with extensive field Hearings Office experience as either an ALJ or Attorney. Non-Attorneys do not have the understanding of the law, due process, etc., to be in any Management positions from top to bottom of the Hearings Offices. The whole idea of having a non-Attorney GS or HOD managing SAA’s and AA’s, is ludicrous. When a SAA or AA pursues other employment in the public or private sectors, interviewers laugh. In other words, OHO comes across as a laughing stock. I will not even get into non-Attorney GS’s and HOD’s constantly pressuring ALJ’s over production numbers. Restructuring of OHO must be done within Management from the top tier to lowest tier for substantive change and improvement to occur.
I liked it when each judge had his own assistant, but now most of reporters are experienced and do very well. I would hate to see any changes made to this system. It's working. There are problems with appearing for hearings and then the claimant doesn't show up. Hearing reporter is not something anyone with minimal computer skills can do. One of the reporters told me that she doesn't see working under these new conditions.
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