From Newsweek:
Several Social Security offices have been closed today amid the larger government shutdown. ...
In California, the Madera Social Security office is unable to provide in-person service until 1 p.m. local time.
Meanwhile, in Montana, the Havre office is only able to provide telephone assistance until further notice due to the shutdown.
New York is facing several disruptions, with the East Bronx location unable to provide in-person services until 10 a.m., and Canarsie and Corning locations only providing phone assistance until further notice.
The Pennsylvania office in Wilkes-Barre is only offering phone assistance on Monday, while Bloomsburg and Reading offices have generally reverted to phone service instead of any in-person options until further notice.
In South Carolina, the Spartanburg office will only be providing phone service on Monday, and the Dallas Fair Park office in Texas will be offering the same service instead of in-person capabilities.
In West Virginia, the Logan SSA office is only available by telephone.
In Wyoming, beneficiaries relying on the Cody office will need to use phone services until further notice. ...
Some of these have to do with local conditions which might occur anytime. Some of these have to do with the reduction in staffing at Social Security. Some of these have to do with the government shutdown. When people aren't being paid, they're not as enthusiastic about showing up for work when they're not feeling so well.
Members of Congress should not get paid until the government shutdown is solved. I think in that manner the shutdown would be over in no time. It’s shameful to have House Republicans to be “working” from their districts for about a month with so much to be done for their constituents.
ReplyDeleteThey are not working, more like grandstanding and owning the libs. Le sigh
DeleteThis shutdown might take awhile…
ReplyDeleteAs the government shutdown enters its fourth week, Senate Republicans are headed to the White House on Tuesday — not for urgent talks on how to end it but for a display of UNITY with President Donald Trump as they refuse to negotiate on any Democratic demands.
Air traffic controllers are becoming Uber drivers and restaurant servers on top of six-day airport shifts to make ends meet during government shutdown.
ReplyDelete“To think that somehow we can live with, ‘You’ll get paid eventually,’ that doesn’t pay the creditors, that doesn’t pay the mortgage, that doesn’t pay gas, that doesn’t pay the food bill,” Daniels said. “No one takes IOUs, and the air traffic controllers are having to feel that pressure as well.”
Air traffic controllers are the group that ended the last shutdown. Enough call in sick, and a wider swath of people are affected. Until the average person actually feels the effects, they tend to view government shutdowns as no big deal and proof we have too much government. Your vacation gets impacted and now it suddenly matters.
DeleteTrump and Vought are enjoying every second of this. They want Federal employees to quit.
ReplyDeleteNotice this is the first time the shutdown has resulted in office closures. Prior generations of SSA workers had dedication to service, and would show up for work, even though they knew all absences were essentially free time off. Current staff are clearly not as dedicated, willing to take advantage at the expense of their duty. The Havre contact station is unrelated, because the sole staff person could be absent at any time, irrespective of SSA funding.
ReplyDeleteShut up, Frank
DeleteWrong. Staff are more dedicated than ever, despite having to serve so very many ungrateful bas**rds like yourself. Unfortunately staff is also smaller by comparison to the population it serves than it has ever been, by a wide f**king margin. And the fault for that rests squarely with the party currently in control of all three branches of government.
DeleteMorale is at an all time low thanks to Vought. Why show up when Vought wants you to quit?
DeleteThe current employees are beat down from 9+ months of being traumatized by Russ Vought, extreme understaffing, DOGE, etc. Constant anxiety and low morale will leave people with less reserves to push through working without a paycheck, especially while our political leaders don’t show up and still get paid.
DeletePart of the problem is weak management. Employee A dutifully shows up and works. Employee B calls in sick. End result? Both receive equal pay when the government reopens and no one is charged leave. What's the incentive to show up? Force them to take leave, and they'll show up.
DeleteI won’t pretend to know what’s going on at this specific offices, but at some point if you don’t have money coming in, you can’t pay for costs associated with working such as day care, gas and parking fees. These people may very well want to work but don’t have the means if they don’t have a paycheck.
ReplyDeleteAre SSA employees allowed to pick up gig work like air traffic controllers etc? Like can they drive for DoorDash or Uber etc?
ReplyDeleteSounds like the FO folks are taking advantage of a free vacay. When I worked in the FO during the 2013 shutdown, all leave was cancelled and people dare not call off. It was a different time, I suppose. Operations has gotten soft since then.
ReplyDelete@5:31 I don't believe you ever worked in a Field Office. If you did, they're well rid of you. And if you actually do have Field experience but it's from 2013? When SSA was one of the best places to work in the entire federal goverment? And you think you know what "soft" is? You wouldn't last a day in any of those offices.
DeleteThe information in this article is not updated. The NY offices mentioned are open and running as usual. They were closed … due to renovations and reopened before the shutdown. Read everything with a grain of salt.
ReplyDeleteThe office closures are literally posted on SSA's own website. Today.
DeleteRolanda Williams, who works in the Social Security Administration, told CNN, “I can’t believe I’m here.”
ReplyDelete“You always thought that getting a government job or you know, a federal job, that that’s security, and it’s not,” Williams added.
Williams said at first, she didn’t think she would need the assistance of a food bank but as the shutdown drags on, she needs the help.
“Initially, I was like, well I’d rather let people that have kids, you know, go to the food banks so that everyone could have food because I was okay,” Williams told CNN. “But now … it’s like I need to stand in line too.”
Nearly 700,000 federal employees are currently home on furlough, all of whom received only partial paychecks in recent days since the last few days of the pay period occurred after the shutdown began. Another roughly 1.5 million are working, a portion of whom are getting normal paychecks as their agencies are using leftover or otherwise available funds. The majority, however, are working without on-time pay.
“We don’t know when our next paycheck is going to come,” said Pete LeFevre, an air traffic controller at Dulles International Airport outside Washington, D.C. “We don’t know how long the shutdown is going to last. As we get closer to getting a zero paycheck, bills will continue to come in. The bills are piling up on the kitchen counter.”