A group of Democratic senators have revisited a long-dormant effort to broaden the bargaining unit of administrative law judges at the Social Security Administration, buoyed by recent guidance from the Biden administration aimed at encouraging collective bargaining at federal agencies.
In 2007, then-Social Security Commissioner Michael Astrue created the agency’s National Hearing Center, a cadre of administrative law judges who would parachute into regions with a long backlog of disability claims, but he left the component’s employees outside of the ALJ bargaining unit at the Office of Hearing Operations, which is represented by the Association of Administrative Law Judges.
In 2011, the Federal Labor Relations Authority sided with Astrue, finding that although National Hearing Center judges had nearly identical job duties, they were management officials because they supervised decision writers. That said, the FLRA also found that the agency committed unfair labor practices by exhibiting hostility toward the union and failing to notify the group of the component’s creation.
In a letter to Acting Social Security Commissioner Kilolo Kijakazi last month, five Democratic senators, led by Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, urged the agency to consider classifying judges in the National Hearing Center as bargaining unit employees and granting them access to the Association of Administrative Law Judges. They cited the fact that in the years since the FLRA’s decision, the differences in the responsibilities of ALJs in both agency components have disappeared. ...
Bad grammar in that first sentence! Tut, tut, tut
If ALJs has any reasonable oversight of decision writers, the grammar would have been better....
ReplyDelete*would of
DeleteWhere's a supervisory ALJ to correct your grammar when you need one, huh, 8:23?
DeleteWill the new ALJs - to be classified in 'excepted service' be eligible for union membebership?
ReplyDeleteShould be. Most of the OHO decision writers are both excepted service and bargaining unit employees, so I'd expect it would be the same for the incoming ALJs.
DeleteHas anyone figured out why SSA is hiring ALJ's when there are not enough cases for hearings currently? Even if many ALJ's retire soon, there are still not enough cases to justify the ALJ hirings.
ReplyDeleteCase loads are fluid, not static, and were artificially depressed by pandemic relief benefits and FO closures. More cases are coming and the time to onboard judges is now, before the deluge.
DeleteIllusory management powers? No, the same as any lowly first-line supervisor. The layers of mgmt above each first-line has their greater sphere of power and prerogative to use it.
ReplyDeleteWhat is going on is that some folks who become ALJs think they have quite expansive power; some of them who are supervisors think that means they can do whatever/whenever vis-a-vis their subordinates, when that is certainly not the case especially for CBA-covered lawyers, ha!