After two long years, Social Security offices are scheduled to reopen in early April.
It was wrong to keep them closed (to all but those deemed to be in dire need) for so long. Post offices never closed. ...
During the two years of closed offices, claims for disability benefits plummeted, at a time when they should have skyrocketed, given the pandemic. ...
But the reopening may be rocky — or worse. There may be very long lines; there may be people who wait and wait but are not served. People may be forced to wait outside in the rain. If things go horribly wrong, there could even be violence, committed by people who are desperate. ...
The Social Security Administration (“SSA”) should have started planning for reopening the day the offices were closed. But unfortunately, the commissioner at the time was a Donald Trump crony, Andrew Saul, who was only too happy to work from home himself, even before the pandemic.
Ralph de Juliis, head of the union council representing field office workers, also contributed to the two years of closed offices. Shockingly, he has publicly advocated for permanently shuttering almost all of the more than 1200 field offices. ...
Congress has starved SSA — and continues to do so.The Omnibus funding bill recently passed by Congress drastically underfunds SSA ....
This is part of a long pattern of Congress underfunding SSA, which began years before the pandemic. Between 2010 and 2021, SSA’s operating budget fell by 13 percent. During the same period, the number of beneficiaries grew by 21 percent due largely to the (still ongoing) retirement of the Baby Boom generation. ...
For most of its history, SSA had a well-deserved reputation for providing exemplary service to the public. People went to their local field offices knowing they would get excellent, compassionate help with their earned benefits. It was considered one of the best federal agencies to work for, as well. Now, it ranks near the bottom. Training, which used to be extensive and first-rate, has reportedly deteriorated. ...
You would expect that Altman would be sympathetic to de Juliis and the union. I think it's a sign of just how outrageous the union has become that Altman is criticizing him by name.
It's not a good long term strategy for a labor union to lose support from the left since it will never have support from the right.
15 comments:
Ms. Altman's opinion does not reflect those of the left. Most liberal Democrats support labor unions, including AFGE. Mr. de Juliis of AFGE deserves credit for standing up for the safety and health of both SSA workers and the general public.
Thousands of additional COVID19 deaths could have occurred, if SSA offices had remained open, with crowded lobbies and face to face interviews.
The comparison to the post office is a false analogy. PO employees must be there to handle packages and mail. Most SSA jobs can be done quite well from home.
Teleworking has worked well, considering the budget and overtime cuts, and staffing issues.. de Juliis is correct, in that doing things in person at the FO is the old way 1980's way of doing things: so much can be done online now..
Hmmm... blame the guy who wanted to cut back on telework and don't say a thing about the current commissioner who missed the deadline to submit a reopening plan. Saul has been gone for months but she mentions him but fails to point out that the current commissioner is simply carrying out the union's orders. Why is it that political bias makes it so that many people cannot see the obvious?
9:10, a lot can be done by people working from home. But many things (opening and scanning mail, verifying identity documents, etc.) cannot.
Some things could theoretically be done from home, but SSA's systems (and training in how to use the systems, and supervision to make sure they're being used properly) are lacking.
Other things could be done by teleworking staff if the public were all literate, stably housed, with at least average IQ, able to speak English, in possession of technology (phones, scanners, computers, printers) that they knew how to use, and not experiencing dementia or other impairments. However, SSA serves a lot of elderly, disabled, poor, confused, people who are not going to be able to get through--or get their points across--except by showing up at a field office and talking to someone. You can say too bad and that the SSA employees' safety and comfort is more important than getting the public the correct amount of benefits and the right information. But lots of people are going to disagree.
SSA should hire social workers to help the people they serve. The need seems to be great for that type of service. Oh wait, Congress doesn’t care about the public, so never mind.
Bravo Ms. Altman.
Not sure Saul can be blamed for the problems in reopening. But Saul is to blame for the inaction during the pandemic. Also, his resistance to telework when first came into office was horrific. Still, the opening of the SSA will be a mess. Have told my clients to try to still do business over the phone if they can.
What a mess.
So looking forward to workers coming back to the office and working purposely slowly to punish the people that have to use their services. It should be a hoot.
@9;10
Most liberal democrats support a functional government that can effectively provide services to the people it purports to serve. The work SSA does can not be not effectively with a 100% remote workforce, and that has been demonstrated by the incompetence and terrible service during the pandemic. Stop pretending everything is fine when SSA's phone system is broken and understaffed. And there are many older and disabled Americans who have trouble navigating the online resources.
It has been repeatedly pointed out on this blog's comment section, that SSA overtime was severely cut starting in 2020 . Shortly after the time SSA employees started 100% telework.
If anyone has statistics proving a drop in per hour employee productivity at SSA after telework started, please share them. I have not seen them.
I think that people are mistaken in blaming SSA employees, and telework. The real culprit for the deterioration in SSA service, is the curtailment of overtime. Fewer work hours = bigger backlogs and less time for customer service.
The agency has depended on heavy Operations overtime for many years. There is still little money in the budget for overtime.
Things are not going to improve much, if at all, when the offices reopen.
TDS in the story and the comments
What is this frequent discussion regarding overtime? Why is staff working overtime? Insufficient number of employees? Hire more staff. It seems that overtime hours are considered part of a normal work week by SSA employees. That seems odd.
Nothing odd about it. It's cheaper to pay existing employees OT than hire new employees and pay for their training and lucrative benefits package.
You agency cannot keep up even with overtime. And if you think it’s weird that SSA employees consider overtime “normal”, then you have no clue about what working for the agency is like at all. The whole damn place is a joke.
No overtime for me. It’s not worth it. I’d rather spend time with my family.
Some people may not understand just how vital SSA overtime is for keeping up with workloads.
The PC I work in, for example, usually had Saturday overtime of 8 hours, Sunday overtime of 6 hours, and 4 hours of weekday overtime available. That's 18 hours of overtime, and some employees worked every minute of it.
By cutting the workweek of these employees from 58 hours to 40 hours, there is obviously going to be a similar drop in productivity.
With current staffing, it is simply impossible to keep up with the SSA workloads without OT. I've been in SSA Operations since 1980, SSA has Operations has had OT since then.
Recent cuts in OT are the deepest I've seen over such an extended period of time (two years now with very limited OT, and none currently ).
The technical jobs at SSA are complex and difficult to learn. It takes years to learn these jobs, to do them well. It is much more cost effective for SSA to have overtime than to train new SSA employees, pay for their salary and retirement, health costs, etc.
9:21 Wise choice. I wish now that I had not worked so much overtime when my daughter was little.
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