Democratic Senators Wyden and Warren have written the Commissioner of Social Security asking for answers about the sudden reassignments of front line agency employees to answering 1-800 phone calls at about the same time that many metrics of agency functioning have been removed from public view.
17 comments:
Frankie is busy trying to privatize the agency. Expect a response by no later than NEVER. This administration only answers to the Supreme Court.
At this point I’m taking the stoic approach and just don’t care anymore. Nobody cares about service cuts. Nobody is listening. There is no accountability. I can’t care about giving my best to the public and maintain my sanity anymore. It is what it is. I’m moving to the camp of show up, do my 8, go home and get my paycheck. It’s impossible to do go good anymore and I’m not gonna try. There’s no incentive and the burnout has eclipsed my sense of duty. I’m so sorry. I tried.
No, because supposedly he just decided to pull two CSs from each Field Office in the state of Georgia to answer the TSC line.
I don’t think Comm’r Frank replies. Most of those reassigned are very happy with their new positions.
Hate to break it to them but Frankenstein won't reply...
The CSRs now answering the 800# have received ZERO training. Their PIN is different than a TSC PIN and therefore can do more. But how much more should they do? They also do not know all the ins and out of state programs such as Medicaid. The coup de grasse is screwing the FOs even more. We already have record numbers of people coming to the FOs and now less front line people to handle it. So then you have to pull CS’ from their claims work to manage reception and answer phones. What could possibly go wrong?
Geez. You much be really, really bored. Get outside and enjoy the sunshine rather than spamming the comments sections with absolute rubbish. Bless your heart.
Who are you kidding? You are not an SSA employee. No one who was reassigned is happy in their reassigned positions. No one is happy to be demoted several pay grades and expected to do work for which they never trained or signed up for. You sir, are living in some sort of alternate reality.
RO/CO reassignments are different than the focus of this post. I’ve seen multiple people talk about the RO/CO reassignments as if they are the same. This is assigning CSRs in the field to answer the 800#. So those left behind in the FO have to backfill their assignments/workloads further diminishing availability/capacity for claim work.
Same
Same thing happened to those of us left at HQ. That’s what we’ve been dealing with.
RO/CO personnel reassignments (and the destruction of Regions) are very much part of the problem! Throwing highly specialized employees into untrained for and under-graded positions is exactly the same kind of simplistic thinking that is running the current clown show. All SSA employees are specialists in what they do and each position is not just like the other. The current clown show is being run by outsiders having no knowledge of the complexity of the SSA programs and the interaction of its systems. It is obvious you do not know what the different positions in SSA are. They are not all alike and do not handle the same functions or make determinations.
Due to the complexity of SSA law and procedures to carry out those laws, no one SSA position handles everything. That is why potential SSA employees do not just walk in off the street and must undergo extensive training in their position. Once initially trained, they undergo months (and years) of on-the-job mentoring. CA's and BA's in the PSC's receive 10 months of initial training and then are not journeymen for several years. TSR's in the TSC's receive about 3 months of telephone training and are not journeymen for several years. CT's and CSR's in the FO's also initially train for several months and are not journey for several years. ODAR has its own training regimen and journeymen process. SSA has many other positions that require highly specialized technical knowledge all of which require more than presented in initial training. With the almost continual changes in SSA law, SSA technicians have to be trained on those changes. Claims made to SSA are not just a fill-in-the-box on an application and you get a check operations. To consider all SSA employees as technical equals is the philosophy of a fool and it is currently reflected in the operations of the current clown show.
You are right on point I am an SSA employee, no one was happy to take a reassignment or a retirement offer. To say otherwise is just BS.
I doubt that he pays any attention at all to anyone. Removing all the public stats gives him the ability to ignore everything except what he wants to lie about. In the Wall Street world, it is all about "surviving the next quarter", which is the mindset that he brings with him.
As far as Congress is concerned, Bisignano knows the Democrats are effectively neutered and that he is safe from them as long as he hides the numbers. As a result, he can act more like Muttley than Dick Dastardly with effectively no consequences.
FO employees in offices with these reassignments are reporting that they are having to turn away members of the public now due to hours long wait times, and the fact that they simply don’t have the staff to see everyone. The reps who are answering the 800 number can’t do anything else, so they are zero help to their office.
I’ll say too, as Frank hates telework, and will probably claim (if he responds at all) that things are better now than they were when people were working hybrid. That’s simply not the case. There is tons of behind the scenes stuff that a FO employee does, and plenty that can be done at home 2 days a week. They were helping their office then, now they aren’t able to help their office at all. Some offices have been hit harder than others with the amount of people taken for this “pilot”. What good is getting the 800 call time down if literally nothing else in the agency can get done? We are so much more than a teleservice center. Frank needs to realize that quickly and turn this around.
To any FO employees reading this- you can (and should) tell members of the public that are angry and/or turned away to call their Congressman/woman.
Same
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