From Government Executive:
Officials with a union that represents administrative law judges at the Social Security Administration are preparing for a push to pass legislation to expand the amount of annual leave they can carry over each year. ...
The Association of Administrative Law Judges said it has been hard at work in recent months to build bipartisan support in Congress for a legislative proposal to increase that cap to 90 days. Officials said the change would be fairer to ALJs who undergo more scrutiny than most other General Schedule employees and could offer a novel way to retain a highly specialized and aging workforce. ...
[The union president] said her organization’s proposal could help the agency in two ways. First, the agency has already seen the headcount of its ALJ corps shrink from 1,645 in 2018 to only 1,170 last year. Data from an internal survey of AALJ members found that in fiscal 2023, SSA administrative law judges forfeited an average of 27 hours of leave per year due to the annual leave cap, compared to just 0.75 hours of forfeited leave on average across the General Schedule from fiscal 2019 to 2023.
At a time when the agency projects the number of initial disability determinations to increase by more than 300,000 this fiscal year—and with them, appeals of those determinations—a boost to the leave cap could allow judges to take more cases. ...
This sounds like a hard sell to me.
9 comments:
Legislatively, not going to happen. The House of Representatives is all about slashing employee benefits (and employees), not increasing them. And, simply stated, increased leave carry-over is a large increase in benefits.
Besides, there is a process through which all employees (including ALJs) can request that forfeited leave be restored to them.
However, in order to use it, the leave loss has to be work related (ALJ shortages preventing leave would qualify) and the forfeiture must have been for work-related reasons beyond their control which prevented leave from being rescheduled and used before the end of the leave year (i.e. not just because the John Doe could have taken off but just didn't want to take leave during the times available, which is what normally happens in leave forfeiture cases).
I could see O'Malley approving this as it is within his power to do so.
This doesn't make the ALJs appear too bright in a number of ways. People with much lower grades than themselves have mastered the art of using their leave to avoid this so their inability to do so within the rules sure seems a bit incompetent. Plus the optics. "We're special"
Many years ago I worked as a Staff Attorney at the hearing office. The ALJ I was assigned to would regularly sneak out around noon nearly every day without ever taking leave. Everyone knew and eventually he got caught and was suspended for a time but retired before that took effect.
But, meanwhile, he was already complaining every year about all the use or lose time he was losing.
These stories are so tired. Since 2011, Gruber, Bice and Nagle were given free rein and have made the work environment a nightmare for bargaining unit judges. But I agree that an increased leave balance carryover will never get through Congress
The ALJs have plenty of time to take leave... with caseloads being lower than they have been in years, this is a ridiculous thing to ask for. A good suggestion would be for them to learn docket management to timely process cases. Most ALJs can do this, but for those that can't, the Agency has no way to get rid of them; they only hurt the waiting public and they don't seem to care. Some of the union big wigs are completely inept at docket management and do not seem to care how long claimants wait - and they want to ask for more time to take leave?! How about training to motivate and move cases timely.
In the article, the ALJ union president says “ALJs are more similarly situated to Senior Level (SL) employees—SES, ST and SL employees . . .” That sounds like a Schedule F employee. If Project 2025 comes to fore and ALJs are deemed to be Schedule F employees, then ALJs may lose their jobs.
ALJs will get fired under a second Trump term regardless. This union board is particularly inept, however. Such an embarrassing proposal. Tried to work with one of their regional VPs, who could never manage a full docket, but she's totally out of control. Mixes prescriptions and alcohol after hours, and therefore a mess during work hours.
Way to read the room, don't they know there's more important issues facing federal employee including ALJ's right now?
ALJs are magically able to find/are given ways to stay in duty status when every other employee would have to use leave, that's a big reason why so many stay in use or lose. Trust me, these jokers are taking their two+ weeks for a crummy cruise regularly, they just aren't using much leave for smaller increments like normal employees because their nickels and dimes are just not watched.
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