The Covid-19 timeline is starting to come into focus. Before the end of the month Covid-19 vaccinations will have begun. Probably only medical personnel and first responders will be vaccinated at the beginning. However, by early next year it will probably be possible to start vaccinating older people and those with chronic illnesses. It will take until around May or June to make vaccination available to anyone who wants it. Sadly, a significant percentage of the population will refuse vaccination.
I've got a lot of questions about how Social Security reopens:
- Does Social Security wait to reopen its offices until all its employees can be vaccinated or does it allow or require employees to return to their offices as they complete their vaccinations?
- Can field offices be reopened to the public in some partial manner before all employees can return to the office?
- Does Social Security have the legal authority -- and the will -- to demand that its employees be vaccinated or else lose their jobs? Unvaccinated employees in the office are a threat to other unvaccinated employees and customers. To some extent, they're a threat even to vaccinated employees since the vaccines are less than 100% effective.
- Can Social Security refuse to allow members of the public to enter its field offices if they cannot present proof of vaccination? Unvaccinated customers in waiting rooms are a threat to other customers and to employees.
- Once field offices reopen there's going to be a crush of people wanting to be seen in person. Other than urging people to make appointments, how does Social Security deal with this? Appointment calendars may quickly fill up for months into the future. There's also the problem that there's a specific statutory requirement that Social Security deal with many walk-in customers. 42 U.S.C. §405(t).
19 comments:
SSA does not care about the welfare of its employees as much as it should. So, the reopening will reflect that.
Vaccinate them and put them back to work. The rest of us are working. No excuse, absolutely no excuse.
Hey 7:16, at least you're not living in a tent in the freezing weather like one of my clients who should have had benefits 3 or 4 years ago. Its a shame that ya'll government employees are so abused, isn't it?
There seems to be a misunderstanding in the premise of the post as well as the comments. SS is currently open, employees are working, the public is being served.
Should not be a law. But businesses should strongly encourage it. Kind of like have to take a TB test to work around children sometimes. Or must be MMR vaccinated. The Covid vaccine should be a requirement of employment moving forward
Hey 9:11 . SSA has been working throughout COVID albeit remotely. Telephone inquiries/contacts to field offices have increased at least two fold. FO employees answer these calls WHILE trying to do case work as well. It is VERY challenging. There have been numerous expedients implemented to curtail normal documentation requirements due to COVID to facilitate case processing. These expedients have relieved some on the public to submit evidence. Electronic submission capabilities have been enhanced as well.
SSA ALJ here. I would go back to the office tomorrow if I could, I am not a fan of these telephonic hearings but it is what it is.
@10:01 AM ah yes the gold standard. unless you are forced into abject poverty then you have no right to complain. How does it feel to advocate for the homeless while you yourself sleep in a heated room?
"You can't complain about your bad circumstances because our grotesque system immiserates millions worse than you" is peak degenerate American brain and why nothing will ever get better.
So, how many of you who are so afraid of going back to the office have been going to Walmart?
They will not be able to force employees to get vaccinated against their will under threat of losing their employment. The unions will fight that tooth an nail and the courts will shut that down fast.
851, you think you are so smug and everyone else is lying. I leave my house no more than 2x a week, most weeks only once. I rarely go to big box stores and even then I go on off times/days. I shop at a local market when I do go out. It is small, not overly crowded and staffed by people I have known for over 20 years. They are somewhat expensive but I am not spending on anything else. I am grateful that I have my job, knowing that there are millions in much worse circumstances. I have several underlying health conditions and am rapidly approaching retirement age. I have already volunteered to go back to the office. I admit that there are some very bad apples at SSA and their posts make me cringe. But please stop making it sound like we are all awful people on the government dole who don't want to go back to the office. Contrary to public opinion, working at home is not a party, especially under these circumstances. Yet we are very lucky, so no complaints from me. Try to temper your comments with some sense of reality.
Doctors, nurses, police officers, folks that work for the electric company, water department, postal employees, delivery drivers, truck drivers, those folks who stock the big box stores and the local grocery stores, and many, many others have gone to work every single day throughout this. Stop whining.
10:05 -- I disagree, employers can/will be able to require vaccinations (and they should!) as long as they have reasonable accommodation for those who are unable to receive the vaccination. That will include the federal government -- especially one with a president who doesn't think that Covid is magically going to go away.
@10:05 Why should employers require the vaccinations? If you get the vaccination and I don't, how does that jeopardize you? Life is full of choices and taking the vaccine should be yet another one. And if you are concerned that you could still get the virus despite being vaccinated, then I guess you probably should drive in a car because you could get in an accident and get killed.
2:32 You obviously do not have understand herd immunity. Vaccines are at best 90% effective. Which means 10% of the time they are not. If there are 11 people at your office and 9 get the vaccination and you do not, then chances are that if you become ill, you will infect one of them. Let's pretend that one person lives with a person who can not get the vaccination because they have an autoimmune disorder or they have recently finished chemo. That person becomes ill and dies.
Also, financially our country can not afford to provide medical treatment to all the idiots who catch covid because they refuse to get a vaccine. Already we are having to pay for the ones who refused to wear a mask and socially distance.
Make it mandatory to get a vaccine. If you don't then you are suspended without pay.
What about employees that have a religious exception to vaccination. Are they to be discriminated against?
Yep. Most religious exceptions are nonsense. Let them take it to the courts.
If SCOTUS wants to find it unconstitutional like Cuomo's limitation of church gatherings then SSA can give a reasonable accommodation. This is a public health issue not your personal freedom issue.
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