From Federal News Network:
For at least the third time in the last seven years, the Social Security Administration is trying to reduce the average age, if not the size, of its workforce.
SSA sent out a note to all employees April 2 saying it would be offering Voluntary Early Retirement Authority (VERA) to all employees except for administrative law judges. ...
It's interesting that ALJs are excluded. The Office of Hearings Operations, where the ALJs work, is probably the only part of Social Security with a declining backlog.
Employees must have at least 20 years of federal service and be at least 50-years old, or have at least 25 years of federal service regardless of age.
Run Forest! Run!!!
ReplyDeleteALJ's in general are late career hires, no need to offer an incentive to retire when a large portion will require without any carrot being offered each year.
ReplyDeleteI would think most employees under CSRS are already eligible for retirement unless they had a very long break in employment. Usually, these offers of early retirement only attract workers very close to retirement anyway.
ReplyDeleteright, the "early" retirement thing is kind of weird, you can ALWAYS retire and even the "early" retirement docks your benefits proportional to how early your retire. I'm not sure what it actually gets you. FERS incentivizes high-3 and years of service, so unless the early retirement helps in those areas (it doesn't), the earlier poster is right in that it only attracts those very close (i.e. a few months away) to retirement already.
ReplyDeleteIs there are law or reg that prevents SSA from offering early retirement to ALJs?
ReplyDeleteAnonymous @1:55 - no law; the agency requests authority from OPM to offer early out, and the agency determines which staff. During COSS Astrue's tenure, parts of SSA received Early Out but all of DCO was excluded. Excluding ALJs has happened before for various workload reasons. It does seem at odds though since the hearings pending number is declining again.
ReplyDeleteThere is no need to offer early out to ALJ's.
ReplyDeleteThe attrition rate is much higher for ALJ's and at any given time about a third of them are retirement eligible.
Most agencies don't offer early out to specialized professionals because the agency either has a big investment in training or the people with the desired qualifications are hard to recruit.
SSA hasn't hired ALJs since the changes to the register process, all that is still in limbo, the agency already isn't keeping up with regular retirements
ReplyDeleteJust another step to give no incentives to ALJs. They want them to age out and then not rehire a replacement.
ReplyDelete@10:28
ReplyDeleteThey just sent out a new type of hiring solicitation per the ALJ board. Looks like they'll be doing some hiring this FY.