A press release from the House Ways and Means Committee:
Today, Ways & Means Committee Chairman Richard E. Neal (D-MA), Social Security Subcommittee Chairman John B. Larson (D-CT), and Worker and Family Support Subcommittee Chairman Danny K. Davis (D-IL) sent a letter to Social Security Administration (SSA) Acting Commissioner Nancy A. Berryhill, highlighting their concerns with SSA’s failure to negotiate in good faith with the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), which represents 45,000 of the agency’s employees. In its contract negotiations, SSA is deliberately pursuing several anti-union policies that a U.S. District Court previously blocked.
“SSA’s employees touch the lives of millions of Americans, ensuring that they are able to receive the benefits they have earned,” wrote Neal, Larson, and Davis. “Every day, they make sure that workers can afford to retire, that people with disabilities can live with dignity, and that widows and dependents are protected from destitution after losing a breadwinner’s income. Undermining SSA employees’ fundamental workplace rights and collective bargaining rights will immediately weaken the agency’s ability to fulfill its mission – delivering quality Social Security services to the public. We will not stand by while that happens.”
The members urged SSA to return to the bargaining table with AFGE and negotiate in good faith.
Full text of the letter is available HERE.
I was a member of that union when I was a CR. All I ever saw it do was take a full time TII CR out of rotation doing SSA work and have him doing Union Business all the time while we had to take his workload. Useless. Glad to not be a member any longer and even happier not being a CR. 60% of my training class left SSA as CRs within 8 years.
ReplyDeleteHelp get the benefits you earn and live with dignity, that's a joke. My husband just got denied disability after 2 years wait and yes we had strong medical evidence.Lawyer says it could be two more years waiting for appeal or we can re file and lose the past 2 years of money owed to us. Meanwhile, after paying in to the system for 37 years we are going to lose everything we worked for.
ReplyDeleteI'm always amazed at those people on the front lines who questioned the utility of the unions in their own offices. If it wasn't for the Union's many of you wouldn't get overtime, no comp time, no credit hours, no telework ( I'm running out of space here)...
ReplyDeleteUnions don't always do the right thing, but if they weren't there you would never get the right thing. Maybe you're just angry at the fact that you had to pick up a little of somebody else's work.
As to anyting in "good faith" coming from the administrators of the agencies in our current political situation, that word seems to be used a lot whenever the agency is talking to an employee or to a union, etc etc. They use that word almost as though they're in preparation for litigation. But it's just words.