The report shown below was obtained from Social Security by the National Organization of Social Security Claimants Representatives (NOSSCR) and published in its newsletter, which is not available online to non-members. It contains basic operating statistics for Social Security's Office of Hearings Operations.
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Either budget uncertainty or, my guess: OHO has finally contacted and recontacted, done all pre-hearing development possible, and either scheduled or left on ice for the foreseeable future all the claimants in the scheduling pipeline and no longer needs to use that OT for decision writers and clerks to continue those extraordinary contact/scheduling measures.
ReplyDeleteEven with the huge new workload of holding hearings for clerks, OHO staff is much larger than the (usual) work on hand right now, esp since COVID hit. Less cases coming in from DDS means the loss of clerks isn't really a problem (OHO is running out of cases to schedule not because the clerks aren't pulling cases fast enough, but because new claims are only trickling in relative to OHO output).
DWs have had too little work (decisions to draft) for nearly a year now and that isn't changing soon/only got worse with COVID (OHO pulled senior attorneys off writing nearly completely ages ago; alternate workloads for 12 DWs were already in the works pre-COVID!).
So unless the brass come up with some new silly labor-intensive plan to deal with COVID fallout that will require lots of labor, I wouldn't expect to see much OT at OHO for some time. The staffing to work ratios aren't changing meaningfully for a couple years even with all the attrition and lack of rehiring fully.
OHO had too many writers, ALJ's and mgt. folks prior to the pandemic. The pandemic only exacerbated the situation.
ReplyDeleteWorking from home leads to fall of OT during holidays.
ReplyDeleteI do not know how they handle the hearing offices, but for DDS they cut overtime if they think we have not "produced" enough cases in the previous period. It does not depend on how much work or cases we have to do but how many cases reported have sent out....notwithstanding the fact that for much of the period in question we were not allowed to do CDRs, get CEs, deny those who did not cooperate per SSA 's instructions or get school records or medical records due to the general situation. I suspect they threaten the people in the hearing offices the same way
ReplyDeleteOHO seems to whimsically dole out overtime. Typical of how OHO operates.
ReplyDelete