From an interview on Federal News Network with former Social Security Commissioner Michael Astrue:
... The sense that I generally had was, [Andrew Saul was] trying to quiet things down. There was no successor between our time and there was an acting, long-term acting who quite frankly, did a brutal job. And pretty much every significant service metric went backwards dramatically. I mean, we spent six years driving down the hearing backlog, which was considered a national scandal and was on CBS Evening News and all that kind of stuff. And we took it down very significantly. And then under Carolyn Colvin, it went back up faster than it went down. And a lot of the other significant measures of service in the public deteriorated very rapidly. So I think my sense of what Andrew was trying to do, was to try to stabilize the agency, at a time when they didn’t have a lot of money, wasn’t getting a lot of attention from the White House or the Congress, and just trying to get some sense of normalcy back to the agency. And that’s kind of my sense of what they were trying to do. ...
Well, I think what’s disappointing is just this sense of neglect. You know, it’s been 14, 15 months now that they’ve had the time to decide what they wanted to do at Social Security [about a new Commissioner]. And they haven’t made a decision. And I think that demoralizing for the agency, it tends to freeze decision making. I think it’s hard to justify. You look at sort of how positions are filled in other agencies, and you say, well, how come not at Social Security, is it just not as important? It’s frustrating. And I agree with you, I believe that the acting commissioner is up any day. And there’s been no announcement on that. The concern is that they’re just going to do nothing. And although violation of the vacancy act often doesn’t bring the agency to its knees, it’s demoralizing for employees, it invalidates certain types of actions, or keeps the commissioner from doing certain types of things, and creates enormous uncertainty. And the last thing that the agency needs, with underfunding and everything else that’s going on is uncertainty. So it would be a very helpful thing for improving service delivery for the White House to decide what direction doesn’t want to go at Social Security and try to find the very best person that they can to run the agency. ...
[T]here’s a history and yet again, both parties, but particularly with the Democrats of nominating candidates [for Commissioner], without any management experience whatsoever, and to get it into an agency where you have 60,000 to 70,000 employees to manage, and you’ve got enormous budgetary issues, you’ve got workloads going through the roof, you have antiquated technology, you have lots and lots of problems. It is really almost unfair to throw someone in who’s managing people for the first time and whose background is policy because they don’t get to do policy. But they got to do a lot of management of a very complex organization. And it’s a tough one to learn on the job. ...
[Interviewer]: And how did you find dealing with the major unions, there, the AFGE councils?
Michael Astrue: Impossible. I mean, they’ve been confrontational since the ’60s, and not really, in my opinion, interested in improving service to the public. They’re interested in expanding the number of employees and that type of thing. And I found them excessively confrontational, dishonest, really, in reporting what was being said and done in the agency, and really very determined not to cooperate in a Republican administration. Now in Democratic administrations, they have what’s called partnership, and at Social Security, White Houses have pretty much interpreted that almost as co-management, which makes it very difficult to make change, and very difficult to improve service, which is why, under Carolyn Colvin, for instance, service went backwards in every conceivable way, because I don’t think she had division but she also had her hands tied by the union. And you worry in this administration, that it’s going to be back to the same thing where you can’t make the changes that you need to improve the quality of work unless the union approves them. ...
19 comments:
We have a template for working with the union, Reagan showed us how it is done.
Dog bites man.
News at 11:
Rich conservative despises labor unions.
The job of a union is to get the best deal possible for it's members, not to 'improve service to the public'. Why would you expect them to be interested in the latter?
He's not wrong about Colvin and her successors. I remember vividly, commented here some about it at the time, those folks seeing the OHO (then ODAR) wave of hearing requests coming (their forecasting folks do good work and were feeding them accurate info) and just not hiring. Then hiring a slew of ALJs but not staff. Then finally hiring all those decision writers it had needed for years all at once in 2017-2018, halfway through chewing through the backlog (while still not hiring other support staff).
Now there's been little work for OHO for a couple years, only after OHO was finally built up in 2019 to handle a wave that began in 2015 and was long gone by early 2020.
And those leaders were getting accurate, good info about workload etc. the whole time. They just chose to take that terrible course and haughtily assume the dispos daily per ALJ stat could be goosed up to necessary levels through performance management.
And to follow up:
It's not like they were starving OHO to do great things elsewhere! I don't recall Operations getting filled up with hires or anything huge during that same time...
@ 10:59
"The job of a union is to get the best deal possible for it's members, not to 'improve service to the public'. Why would you expect them to be interested in the latter?"
Because that is why the agency exists. Unfortunately, too many government employees think as you do, that the government exists to serve them and not the public. Its that kind of thinking that makes people think privatization might be a good idea. We could get rid of the unions that way. Now, if the union realized that the jobs of those they represent exist to serve the public and would see themselves as partners with the agency in accomplishing those goals, the unions could be valuable. But, if they are simply driven by greed and constantly demanding more, more, more...they are useless and need to go away, by any means possible.
Based upon this logic, is the Teachers' Union only interested in getting more money for teachers...and NOT in the education of students? I am not saying your wrong...
And a private company exists to make profit. Yet we'd all laugh at a business owner who was whining that the union wasn't interested increasing his profits. So why is it different if the employer is the government? I have to pay my rent with money like everyone else.
Newsflash: there's no such thing as a free lunch. You want quality service from government employees? Then pay them enough to ensure that. You want to cut government spending and do things on the cheap? Then be prepared for employees with low morale who dont stick around.
It's the primary motivation, yes.
Wow. A former commissioner who did virtually nothing to improve SSA speaks out about the shortcomings of SSA. The irony of that is purely laughable.
ooh ooh me too! So Police Unions are only interested in getting more money and less oversight on the police and not in the equitable enforcement of laws in the communities that they serve? I love it!
Astrue's right about the impact of being acting has and the Dems have to raise their hand on being responsible for both Colvin and the incumbent.
But the anti-union animus of the GOP makes this a big "ho hum" piece.
“I mean, we spent six years driving down the hearing backlog, which was considered a national scandal and was on CBS Evening News and all that kind of stuff.”
That might be the least self-aware, most tone deaf thing I’ve read. Who was the Commissioner when Daugherty was running his scam in WV? Who was the Commissioner watching ALJs disposing of thousands of cases annually at a 90+% favorable rate for years to effectively pay down the backlog and drag the merry band of nitwits in front of a congressional committee where they couldn’t really explain any of their actions? The Daugherty scandal was far bigger than the backlog to the public and more damaging to claimants, and it was under his watch that it happened.
I don’t disagree with the general that the unions can get focused on stupid things at times, but if you think the brass at SSA has any interest in cooperation or working together with its employees, you either don’t work for the agency or are likely part of management. 2017-2021 shed some light on how they operate, and I lost count at the number of unfair practices they were found to have committed and how many times they were slapped down by courts and labor panels/boards.
Employee morale doesn’t drop because of the lack of a Commissioner. It drops because a bunch of SESers in Baltimore that have little idea of how things go in field and hearing offices are setting policies for the entire agency. It drops because the chief judge creates an affidavit where he says judges, who cut the backlog from over 1.1 million in November 2017 to under 600k (I think) before the pandemic, were subverting agency goals and policies by their scheduling practices. It comes from management whipping the good employees and pushing them for more to cover for lower producing employees.
@9:45pm. All great points. And it's not just SESers who have little idea about things occurring in field offices and hearing offices but the management at many hearing offices and field offices are clueless as well. And, that does not even take into account the horrific HPI project of yesteryear which allowed unqualified folks to get management roles at hearing offices and essentially destroy hearing offices throughout the country through their incompetence.
"...Andrew was trying to do, was to try to stabilize the agency , at a time they didn't have a lot of money...get some sense of normalcy back to the agency,..."
Give me a break, this is much too complimentary. Saul was a disaster for the agency, he was not a stabilizing force.
He suddenly terminated all telework for Operations employees, destroying employee morale. He had no idea how to run a large government agency. He irrationally believed that employees should be able to get their work done without overtime, and may have had something to do with the drastic cuts in OT, which greatly increase backlogs. And he pushed right wing policy , thinly veiled attempts to get people off the disability rolls, or keep them from qualifying in the first place. And he had no respect for AFGE and engaged in union busting.
Andrew Saul was a poor commissioner and deserved to be fired. I don't know why Astrue is praising him.
Yeah, just love old Mikey. While he was writing his poetry and working on his single minded crusade to drive down the hearing wait times (which, needed to be worked on, granted), the rest of the agency was left to drown and make do with the least level of resources he could possibly get away with giving us.
In the end, though, I don't guess I can fault him for that given this type of behavior has been consistent across both Democratic and Republican administrations for like forever.
@5:29
A union better be concerned about a business owner's profit. Without the profit motive there would be no business and no jobs. Remember, there used to be a grocery company called "Safeway." Their union found out you couldn't pay cashiers what they were demanding and make a profit so, all those folks lost their jobs.
Unions exist to make union leaders exist. That is the purpose.
Indeed.
Post a Comment