The President’s proposed budget proposes an appropriation for Social Security’s operating budget of $15.5 billion, an increase of nearly $1.4 billion, from the current Fiscal Year. This would be effective with the beginning of FY 2024 on October 1, 2023, if enacted, but Congressional Republicans say they favor massive spending cuts, even though they do not specify what they want cut.
15 comments:
The republicans will attempt to cut SSA’s budget by 40% and then blame telework for a decrease in customer service.
That is a fact. Every field office deficit is blamed on telework. There is a small part of me that wishes to see their astonishment after ending telework that things are still just as bad. Having physical presence in a field office isn’t going to improve the workloads. They are the same massive workloads no matter what space you are working from. The difference is that the lobby gets more attention which then means no one is working on cases already received. It becomes a constant intake but little output.
I know this will be an unpopular opinion here, but I get to say it anonymously, so you all can't hate on me too much!
I do think telework in the front line jobs is increasing worker dissatisfaction and is directly contributing to burnout and high attrition rates.
The problem is that when you have half the staff on telework, it makes life a living hell for those people in the office because there is that much more burden placed on them. Sure - the work from home days are a welcome reprieve, but it just makes the people in the office that much more overwhelmed.
Additionally, experienced mentors who would be able to provide new hires with guidance are not in the office 5x per week, hampering efforts to train and retain new employees.
You add in the fact that many people feel disconnected from the work when they are not in the office and what you get is a toxic brew of misery.
In fairness, the HQ and RO employees slacking from home 5 days a week is a joke, too. The idea that permanent telework is going to exist in perpetuity is farcical. It's just not healthy for anybody.
All that said, yes - the appropriations committee is going to need to provide an adequate appropriation. But how can they justify that to the public, most of whom are going to work 5x a week, when we are all sitting at home?
The agency needs adults at the table to recognize and adjust to these hard truths.
WFM for the FOs, in its current form, isn't going away until at least 10/27/25, as was announced to staff last month.
Yes, unpopular opinion. I personally don’t see the argument. Other than lobby traffic, the work is the same. No telework only means a few more folks to clear lobby visitors; which in turn makes the other pending workloads suffer because you don’t have the time to clear them when you are up front all day. As far as mentors needing to be in the office, trainees do online training and have an online mentor they are to consult with first for help. There is not enough time to sit one on one with a trainee and maintain your own workloads. Workloads are not reduced simply because you are a mentor. You are expected to do the same as everyone else plus mentor. So yes I find your argument invalid.
Yeah, the field office staff are probably feeling burnt out and mad due to telework. That must be why they got so angry when it was completely eliminated years ago, and why they consistently cite the threat of reduced telework as a source of anxiety and low morale.
You’re entitled to your opinion. But you should know how wrong it is.
Mentors for our trainees are 100% remastered in our area anyway, so telework doesn’t really change that.
Personally, I don’t mind the telework two days perk week. I’m not mad the other three days I’m on the office and others are home.
What does bother me is people thinking everything for SSA has to be done in person. It doesn’t - in fact most of it doesn’t.
You are right about one thing, the lobby takes precedent in the FO daily, so the 3 days I’m in the FO, nothing other than the lobby or phones is priority.
However, on my telework days, I get to work on a lot of things I have pending with no one bothering me or asking me to go call numbers.
Telework is here to stay in one form or another.
I agree with you.
I've done mentoring pre COVID and during and it is much easier at times to show someone where their error may be. Mentoring can be done solely online, but like training, via less efficient.
You could be right about attrition and burnout rates. It's much worse now than ever before. I think part of that is just not enough bodies in the agency.
Employees like telework for two main reasons. 1) They get to work from home so no commute and easier to manage family matters. 2) Telework is the only way you can guarantee you are going to get to work on your work. No matter what management has said you can be pulled for calling numbers, etc up front if in the office. It's not any more efficient than if you were in the office and you could lock out the rest of the world. Even in the old days, management or coworkers would come and ask questions or make some demands on your time. Telework allows you to shut out those distractions although that means the people in the office have to figure out the answer when you may know better.
@11:18 In all fairness, saying RO and HQ employees are slacking from home 5 days a week is quite unfair. I have been both since 2020, in the RO and now in HQ. And I’ve worked from home every day since March 13, 2020. And has my world changed one bit? No! In my RO role I had zero public contact. Most of my work was with a team in a different region. And now? I’m an HQ employee working remotely as an outstationed employee. So even if we return to the office, my team will be in Baltimore and I’ll be sitting alone in some other component’s space in the RO. Why does it work? The fact you call it slacking shows you are the kind of person who can’t be trusted with that level of telework. If you can’t understand that many jobs don’t require face to face contact (and wouldn’t even if we were back in the office) then you don’t have an understanding of anything outside of frontline operations. We have the utmost respect for the field (I spent years there) and fully support the opportunity for them to telework as much as they can because for tens of thousands of people, telework makes a huge difference.
The arguments for telework are what is good for the employees, not what is good for the public and agency, at least when it comes to field offices. The offices are understaffed by 30 to 50 percent every day. It's like in the pre-covid days when the flu big hit an office and many called in sick. The pressure on those in the office was quite high to get the work done that day. That's everyday now so easier to get burned out. It's not to say teleworkers do nothing. They clear claims and do other vital work. But for the public that comes into the office, they are not available to help.
Telework is the only reason I have not retired.
It will be the only reason I don’t retire in 2025. If it goes, I go too.
Tell me you don’t work on a field office without telling me.
@823AM. Worked T2 in a field office for over 3 decades.
Guess you love working in the office. Good for you
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