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Jan 7, 2020

Union Leader Castigates Saul

     From an op ed in the Baltimore Sun by
 
But this fallacy falls apart when one takes a closer look. Only a fraction of those new hires will go toward telecommunications centers, and none to the field offices, which are already severely understaffed. On top of that, the Social Security Administration has experienced a yearly attrition rate of nearly 4,000 employees over the past four years, meaning the hiring numbers that are promised aren’t exactly what they seem. The most insidious part of Commissioner Saul’s announcement is the fact that he has placed a hiring freeze on the agency, which is still in effect, preventing the agency from replacing the workforce we’ve lost to the private sector, retirement or other opportunities.
Our field offices had coped with this staff shortage by setting aside time on Wednesday afternoons for employees to address and finish open claims. By opening up these hours to the public, employees will be inundated by new cases, increasing the backlog and elongating wait times for the American public. While Commissioner Saul takes a victory lap, public servants around the country only see their workload increasing. The result is worker morale plummeting by the day. ...
Social Security employees deserve a leadership that understands the issues we face and is dedicated to our mission to provide the best possible service to the American people. That leadership doesn’t exist in Commissioner Saul. That’s why we call on Congress to hold hearings on the agency under Commissioner Saul’s tenure, reopen our contract, and bring the Social Security Administration back to the bargaining table.
     It's not just me asking why the House Social Security Subcommittee hasn't held even one oversight hearing in this Congress.

4 comments:

  1. The Union being boisterous on this issue is almost laughable. They gave away Telework and a popular vision benefit just so they could claim victory on receiving dedicated office space in the field office. Yes, I am a FORMER union member.

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  2. Enjoying the afternoon off today while the teleworkers keep working. Hope the users don’t mind that we aren’t online to support them. Oh well.

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  3. If I was still at the office, working in this kind of environment, I would probably no longer bother with being a team player. I would make my interviews as long as they needed to be in order for me to finish the work with the person sitting at my front end desk. Avoid at all costs taking work back to my work desk to finish later means my interviews would last longer and the waiting times in FEI would then increase. Would drive the supervisors crazy and would not help my performance review scores, but at least I would be able to complete work that I started. And never volunteer for anything.

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  4. New Headline for this "story"

    Two Useless Guys Do Nothing

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