From Government Executive (emphasis added):
By the way, it's Administrative Procedure Act, in the singular. Pluralizing the word "procedure" when talking of the APA is a sign that you're not really familiar with the Act.
The president of a union representing the administrative law judges who adjudicate disability claims has accused the Social Security Administration of bargaining in bad faith. The accusation follows news that federal mediators declared the agency and union to be at impasse in negotiations over a new collective bargaining agreement.
Association of Administrative Law Judges President Melissa McIntosh said her union has filed an internal grievance with the agency over its negotiating practices as they discuss a new contract. She said she believes management is focused on standardizing contracts with disparate bargaining units, rather than on improving efficiency for taxpayers. ...
The agency’s “last best offer” to the union, which was reviewed by Government Executive, includes several proposals that have become standard in the Trump administration, including shifting telework policies to be entirely at the discretion of the agency and a drastic reduction in the amount of official time the union can use. In this case, SSA proposed a 90% cut to official time, from an annual bank of 22,000 hours in the current contract to only 2,000 hours. ...
Equally troubling to the administrative law judges are proposals throughout the contract to remove references to the Administrative Procedures Act and an article affirming the “judicial function” of ALJs at the agency. The judicial function article lays out several key duties of administrative law judges, including the power to call for expert witnesses and ensure due process rights of claimants. ...I'm not sure that removing the reference to the Administrative Procedure Act matters but it's interesting that they want to remove it.
By the way, it's Administrative Procedure Act, in the singular. Pluralizing the word "procedure" when talking of the APA is a sign that you're not really familiar with the Act.
5 comments:
Not that I agree, but I thought SSA's long-standing position was that they were not under the APA? Seems like removing any references to the APA is just in-line with that mindset. Or is that position limited to claims, as opposed to their relationship with ALJs?
If you think pluralizing procedure is bad you need to see some of the OTRs that come in!
I am in favor of the track that the agency is taking. Union work on union time, the work of the people on the taxpayer dime.
We had a local ALJ who did a considerable amount of union related work. At one point I recall her saying that 80% of her time was spent on union work. As a result, she had a nearly non-existent docket. Never understood why she wasn't just an employee of the union as she really wasn't serving as an ALJ. I am sure it was all part of the collective bargaining.
The only people the Union represents are the Union officers. They are completely incompetent/non-factors in my region.
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