SSA Commissioner Touts Accomplishments

I can't tell. Is that logo in the center a physical object or generated electronically?

     From a Social Security website touting Commissioner Martin O'Malley's accomplishments during his first 100 days in office:

... Between November and April, SSA has reduced the average waiting time from 42 minutes to 24 minutes. Further, no one calling SSA receives busy signals and over 35 percent of our callers now receive a call back instead of holding. ...

SSA is updating its Program Operations Manual System (POMS) so agency employees are no longer forced to require wet signatures from customers where eSignature options are available. ...

[Since the agency's appropriations bill passed] Commissioner O’Malley has lifted the agency-wide hiring freeze and approved 1,600 critical hires for the teleservice centers. We also authorized 1,290 field office hires, 600 hires for the State disability determination services, and 300 hires for our hearing offices. ...

New Union Management Cooperation Councils (UMCCs) - which the Special Advisor to the Federal Labor Relations Authority described as being at the forefront of Union-Management collaboration - are engaged in productive and specific pre-decisional discussions between AFGE and SSA management on a variety of topics including improvements to new-hire training, which has been a key area for improvement towards retention of staff. 

Monthly Labor Roundtables and the UMCC provide regular opportunities to maintain an open dialogue between Labor and Management at all levels of SSA, which improves employee morale and efficient. ...

Union Leader Castigates Saul

     From an op ed in the Baltimore Sun by Ralph de Juliis, head of the union local that represents most Social Security employees:

... While the president has blustered and obfuscated through his first term, Trump-appointed Cabinet officials have waged a war on the federal workforce that has undermined our productivity, driven down morale and villainized the very employees who show up every day to serve the American people. ...  

Now under threat is the Social Security Administration thanks to administration decisions that will ultimately harm employees and drive up wait times for Social Security recipients under the guise of good public relations. Social Security Administrator Commissioner Andrew Saul announced that the agency would extend office hours to the public on Wednesday afternoons in more than 1,100 field offices around the country. He followed this announcement with a promise to hire 1,100 new employees, claiming that the new hires would directly impact the efficacy of our field offices. ...

But this fallacy falls apart when one takes a closer look. Only a fraction of those new hires will go toward telecommunications centers, and none to the field offices, which are already severely understaffed. On top of that, the Social Security Administration has experienced a yearly attrition rate of nearly 4,000 employees over the past four years, meaning the hiring numbers that are promised aren’t exactly what they seem. The most insidious part of Commissioner Saul’s announcement is the fact that he has placed a hiring freeze on the agency, which is still in effect, preventing the agency from replacing the workforce we’ve lost to the private sector, retirement or other opportunities.

Our field offices had coped with this staff shortage by setting aside time on Wednesday afternoons for employees to address and finish open claims. By opening up these hours to the public, employees will be inundated by new cases, increasing the backlog and elongating wait times for the American public. While Commissioner Saul takes a victory lap, public servants around the country only see their workload increasing. The result is worker morale plummeting by the day. ...

Social Security employees deserve a leadership that understands the issues we face and is dedicated to our mission to provide the best possible service to the American people. That leadership doesn’t exist in Commissioner Saul. That’s why we call on Congress to hold hearings on the agency under Commissioner Saul’s tenure, reopen our contract, and bring the Social Security Administration back to the bargaining table.

     It's not just me asking why the House Social Security Subcommittee hasn't held even one oversight hearing in this Congress.

Social Security Hiring Freeze: Lazy And Stupid And Insulting

     From Federal News Network:

The Social Security Administration has implemented a hiring freeze across much of the agency’s headquarters. 

SSA Commissioner Andrew Saul announced the hiring freeze, effective July 31, in a memo to senior staff, which Federal News Network obtained. 

An SSA spokesman confirmed the hiring freeze and said it was implemented to ensure agency resources are directly focused on customer service priorities. 

“This freeze applies to all headquarters components and their respective regional offices,” the spokesman said. “Direct public service and workload positions and workload positions in the teleservice centers, processing centers, area and local field offices and state disability determination services are exempt from the hiring freeze.” ... 

SSA headquarters and component offices impacted by the hiring freeze can’t establish new positions or post new external or internal vacancy announcements, according to the agency guidance. 

New appointments for administrative law judges, senior administrative law judges and administrative appeals judges are also prohibited. ... 

In addition, the hiring freeze blocks permanent and temporary promotions for SSA employees, with the exception of career ladder promotions, according to Saul’s memo. ...

     I regard hiring freezes as lazy and stupid and inherently demeaning to civil servants. Even with as many exceptions as this one, hiring freezes inevitably cause dislocations because the vast majority of federal employees do important work for the American people. As these hiring freezes go on exceptions keep getting more and more extensive as it becomes more and more obvious that the work can’t get done without replacing  departing employees. The problems get worse and worse until the hiring freeze is quietly lifted. No significantly money is ever saved. If you really think there are vacancies that shouldn’t be filled, go to the trouble of specifying them. Don’t casually insult federal employees by implying that there is some advantage to the American people in failing to fill vacancies that occur randomly across a large agency.

Hiring Freeze Ends

     From the New York Times:

The Trump administration on Wednesday will lift the hiring freeze that it had imposed on the federal work force, even as it directs agencies to submit plans for personnel cuts and other restructuring moves to fit the budget blueprint released by President Trump last month. ...

The administration is now making clear that it is not giving a green light for agencies to start hiring; instead, the White House is seeking long-term plans from each agency to, in most cases, prepare for cuts. ...

Hiring Freeze Starting To Cause Frostbite

      From The Week:

On Jan. 23, President Trump signed an executive order instituting a 90-day federal hiring freeze, as the first step in a "long-term plan" to cut the federal workforce. It's unclear how far along that plan is, but 79 days into his presidency, the effects of Trump's freeze are already being felt at government agencies like the Social Security Administration, the Veterans Affairs Department, and the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday — and the public is starting to feel the reduced staffing levels, too. ...

At the Social Security Administration, an inability to replace the workforce after departures, combined with a rise in claims as baby boomers retire, has led to longer lines at offices and on the phone. "The agency is doing things they never did before, like sending people home without any service," Witold Skwierczynski, president of a union that represents 25,000 Social Security employees, tells The Wall Street Journal. "You can't just establish a hiring freeze and expect us to continue to do all our work." ...

Social Security Gets Hiring Freeze Exceptions

Granting exceptions

     Upon taking office, Donald Trump did what Republican Presidents have often done in the past, order a federal hiring freeze. This is based upon a general contempt for the work that federal agencies do and the federal employees who do the work. 

     These hiring freezes always start breaking down as it becomes apparent that voters will be discomfited by understaffed federal agencies. Social Security is usually one of the first agencies where it becomes apparent that a hiring freeze will cause visible problems.

     The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) is in charge of administering Trump's hiring freeze and can grant exceptions to it. OPM has now granted an exception to the hiring freeze to allow Social Security to hire Administrative Law Judges, hearing support staff and processing center employees. Unfortunately, there is no exception so far for field office staff.

Members Of Congress Ask That Social Security Be Exempted From Hiring Freeze

     Fifty members of the House of Representatives have written a letter to the President urging that the Social Security Administration be exempted from the hiring freeze he ordered for most of the federal government. They're all Democrats so they probably won't even get an acknowledgment letter in response.