Got A Little Carried Away

      From a Washington Post article titled Trump administration races to fix a big mistake: DOGE fired too many people:

… At the Social Security Administration’s call center in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, IT workers were told by managers in mid-April that they needed to request a transfer or face possible firing, said Barri Sue Bryant, president of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 2809. Nearly all of the 40-plus workers in that office did so, sending their laptops and spare equipment to the agency’s Baltimore headquarters and awaiting a new assignment while the union attempted to explain to leadership how essential these employees were, Bryant said.

 “We are critically understaffed in all of our departments,” Bryant wrote in an email to leadership. “Having systems and employees down is not contributing to the goals of this agency.”
But management would soon find out on their own.


A specialized scanner that can quickly input forms and scan barcodes broke down and was unusable for a day. A customer service representative who was supposed to answer the 800 number couldn’t take calls for three days while her computer was in disrepair.
“It really sent everyone for a loop,” Bryant said.


After three days, the agency told the union the decision had been reversed. The employees got back their equipment and resumed their normal jobs in Wilkes-Barre.
 

Asked about the IT workers, Social Security provided an emailed statement from an unnamed official, whom it declined to identify. The statement did not address the reassignments but criticized “the fake news media, specifically the Washington Post” for “pushing a false narrative about Social Security. The truth is that President Trump is protecting and strengthening Social Security just like he promised.” …

Stretched “Beyond All Recognition”

       From Government Executive:

Acting Social Security Commissioner Leland Dudek this month instructed staff to prepare to convert wide swathes of his agency to the revamped Schedule F, a move that experts say would stretch even the Trump administration’s wide definition of “policy-related” jobs “beyond all recognition.”

The Trump administration last week began moving forward with implementation of the newly-renamed Schedule Policy/Career, a new job classification within the federal government’s excepted service for career federal workers in “policy-related” positions. Employees reclassified into the new job category would be stripped of their civil service protections.

In an April 7 internal email obtained by Government Executive, the acting commissioner took a sweeping view of the role of policy at the independent agency.

“For SSA, policy-making positions encompass a wide range of responsibilities, including shaping regulations and sub-regulatory guidance, overseeing administrative law, managing contracts, guiding information resources management, and integrating research into decision-making,” he wrote. “Individuals in these roles often develop and implement both formal rules and informal policies, interpret and apply laws, and influence how SSA operates.” …

Employee groups and Social Security experts were taken aback by Dudek’s maximalist approach to implementing the new job category. Reclassifying the Office of Hearing Operations entirely into Schedule Policy/Career would impact upwards of 20% of the workforce represented by the American Federation of Government Employees, including jobs that start at as little as $40,000 per year.

“If this email constitutes SSA’s full decision, then the agency has contorted the term ‘policy-influencing’ beyond all recognition,” said Rich Couture, a spokesman for AFGE’s Social Security Administration general committee. “AFGE bargaining unit employees at SSA dutifully apply policies and procedures, established by agency leadership, in the performance of their duties for the American people every day. The employees are not policy-makers . . . The agency cannot take a chainsaw to necessary civil service protections to thousands of SSA workers in an attempt to solve a problem Employee groups and Social Security experts were taken aback by Dudek’s maximalist approach to implementing the new job category. Reclassifying the Office of Hearing Operations entirely into Schedule Policy/Career would impact upwards of 20% of the workforce represented by the American Federation of Government Employees, including jobs that start at as little as $40,000 per year.

“If this email constitutes SSA’s full decision, then the agency has contorted the term ‘policy-influencing’ beyond all recognition,” said Rich Couture, a spokesman for AFGE’s Social Security Administration general committee. “AFGE bargaining unit employees at SSA dutifully apply policies and procedures, established by agency leadership, in the performance of their duties for the American people every day. The employees are not policy-makers . . . The agency cannot take a chainsaw to necessary civil service protections to thousands of SSA workers in an attempt to solve a problem that doesn’t exist.” doesn’t exist.” 

     Sorry about the weird typography. Some weirdness in the original that I can’t undo. 

Union On Threat Of RIFs

Subject: Urgent: Rumors of 50% SSA Staff Reduction (Read on Non-Duty Time)

Reply-To: 

The Union has been made aware of reports that the Acting Commissioner has requested a plan to reduce Social Security staff by 50%. While unofficially confirmed, such a move could have a devastating impact on our jobs, the services we provide, and the communities we serve.

We urge you to be prepared—download your personal files and stay informed.

Now is the time to take action. Contact your Members of Congress and tell them how these cuts would harm the public. Stand with AFGE to fight for our jobs and the people who rely on us. AFGE is better with friends, encourage people to join: https://join.afge.org/.

The very basics if you are illegally terminated (this is not legal advice and should not be taken as legal advice):

1. Understand the reason for termination and remain professional.

2. Have your Official Personnel File (OPF) saved and/or printed, including your last 3 PACS assessments.

3. Be prepared to leave the office without much notice.

4. Appeal the Decision (If Applicable)
*If you believe your termination was unjust, consider filing an appeal with the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) within 30 days. You must use a private email address:
link to e-file: https://e-appeal.mspb.gov/etk-mspb-appeals-prod/login.request.do
*If you were terminated for discrimination (race, gender, disability, etc.), file a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).

5. Be prepared to leave the office without much notice.

6. Apply for Unemployment Benefits.

Set up a meeting place with office coworkers if this should happen and share your personal contact information with each other.

Stay informed. Stay united.

Another Insult From Musk; Unions Fight Back

      From the Washington Post:

All federal workers will shortly receive an email asking what they did last week — and that if employees fail to respond, it will be taken as a resignation, Elon Musk wrote in a post on X Saturday. …

     From a press release:

AFSCME, Alliance for Retired Americans, AFT Challenge DOGE’s Access, Executed by Unconfirmed, Acting Official, to Confidential, Private Data of Hundreds of Millions of Americans  

 

Suit filed on heels of SSA Acting Head’s Departure Amid Concerns about DOGE Access to Data

Baltimore, MD —  In a new lawsuit filed on Friday night, retirees and unions sued to halt DOGE’s unprecedented, unlawful seizure of personal, confidential, private and sensitive data from the Social Security Administration, without any express authority. Such access has been granted by an unlawful acting official, installed at SSA with disregard for the rules governing such appointments. ..

Trump Administration Won’t Abide By Union Contracts On Telework; AFGE Plans To Fight Back

      From Federal News Network:

A memo Monday, signed by OPM Acting Director Charles Ezell, directed agencies not to implement any provisions of collective bargaining agreements that “purport to restrict the agency’s right to determine overall levels of telework.”

The memo also called any telework provisions in union contracts that limit an agency’s ability to set telework policy “likely unlawful and unenforceable,” and stated that setting telework eligibility is a “management right.”

“Provisions of collective bargaining agreements that conflict with management rights are unlawful and cannot be enforced,” the memo states. …

“Union contracts are enforceable by law, and the president does not have the authority to make unilateral changes to those agreements,” AFGE National President Everett Kelley said in a statement. “AFGE will not let the lawless actions of this administration or any agency go unchallenged, and we will use every option available to us to defend our contracts and support the hardworking civil servants who serve our country with honor and distinction.” …

Does Frank Bisignano Realize What He's Gotten Himself Into?

     I'm surprised that Frank Bisignano wants the job as Social Security Commissioner. He's now the highly paid CEO of a very successful corporation. It's his niche and apparently he's very good at it. Is he aware of the problems he'll face at Social Security?

• If he thinks he'll lead Social Security out of its long term financing problems, he's deluded. Senators of both parties will demand that he promise that he will stay completely away from long term financing issues. He can't be confirmed without making such promises. For that matter, I'm pretty sure that Trump would want him to stay away from such issues. Also, if he actually looks into the political thicket surrounding it, he'll want nothing to do with Social Security "reform." Let Elon Musk take that bullet.
  
• If he thinks he can in any sense "transform" Social Security, he's deluded. There's no simple fix, technical or otherwise, for Social Security's service delivery problems. There's not even a complicated set of fixes that don't take a lot of money and time. It's highly unlikely that he'll get more money.
• If he thinks that he'll have an advantage because he knows nothing about Social Security and won't be held back by old ideas, he's deluded. In any job, it helps to know how things are already set up, what the obstacles to change are, and what ideas have been tried before and how they worked out. The people who came before you weren't fools (except for Jo Anne Barnhart). Social Security isn't a Gordian knot and Bisignano won’t have have a sword.
  
• If he thinks that the real problem at Social Security is that federal employees are stupid and lazy, he's deluded. That sort of arrogance would lead to indifference, if not joy, in losing the experienced, hard-working employees who keep the Social Security Administration afloat. Not every agency employee is a star but they mostly do their jobs ably. There just aren't enough of them.
  
• If he thinks that ending telework will make Social Security significantly more effective, he's deluded. I've been around long enough to know that telework makes little, if any, difference. If telework ends, some percentage of employees will quit. My guess is that it won't be that high a percentage but that's just a guess. Nobody knows. Losing even a few experienced people will hurt an agency that's as bad off as the Social Security Administration. The commonly held view that Social Security is simple is simply wrong. For example, there's not just one type of Social Security disability benefit. Depending upon how you count them, there are as many as seven (remember that blindness is a separate category under both Title II and Title XVI)! And don't get him started on the windfall offset! It'll blow his mind. It takes long training and considerable experience for an employee to become competent.
  
• If he thinks he can transform the Social Security Administration with new IT, he's deluded. When the companies that Gisignano has led have needed to spend money to acquire new IT systems, all he's had to do was to convince a complaisant board of directors to approve the money. The money was available since the companies were profitable. The situation at Social Security is entirely different. Convincing the White House to approve additional funding will be hard enough. Convincing Congress is much more difficult. Martin O'Malley is a born lobbyist. How far did he get? Is Gisignano any kind of lobbyist?
• If he thinks that fighting employee unions will make the Social Security Administration more effective, he's deluded. The unions can be a pain in the neck but they have just about no effect on productivity. Spending energy fighting them isn't worth it. They're not the enemy.
  

What About NTEU And ALJ Unions?

    The Biden Administration signed contracts with the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) to lock in telework at Social Security until 2029 but there are at least two other, smaller employee unions at Social Security -- the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) and the ALJ union. What's with them? Do they have new, unannounced contracts or were they just already protected?

Biden Administration Tries To Lock In Telework At SSA

      From Bloomberg News: 

A Biden administration appointee has agreed to lock in hybrid work protections for tens of thousands of Social Security staff, part of a slew of organized labor efforts that complicate President-elect Donald Trump's efforts to reshape the federal workforce.

 

The American Federation of Government Employees, a union representing 42,000 Social Security Administration workers, reached an agreement with the agency last week that will protect telework until 2029 in an updated contract, according to a message to its members viewed by Bloomberg.

The new deal, signed by President Joe Biden’s just-departed SSA Commissioner Martin O’Malley, will let workers “maintain current levels of telework,” AFGE chapter president Rich Couture wrote. …

  

A US president "can't just set aside lawfully signed collective bargaining agreements, without the unions' agreement," Indiana University law professor Kenneth G. Dau-Schmidt said via email. "The US government has to live up to its agreements, too.

"

ALJs Push Annual Leave Change

     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.

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. ...

New Telework Wrinkle

     From Federal News Network:

... Under a new memorandum of understanding (MOU) between SSA and the American Federation of Government Employees, signed March 1, employees can now request “episodic telework” — or extra work-from-home days — when unexpected personal circumstances arise.

The new flexibility, which took effect March 4, gives SSA employees the option to occasionally request taking an extra day of telework in extenuating circumstances. That’s instead of having to take time off or dip into annual leave. ...

Agency spending levels are the next challenge SSA will face. To try to improve services and morale at SSA, AFGE is proposing a supplemental funding package of $20 billion over the next 10 years.

The highly anticipated budget proposal from House and Senate appropriators, which has a deadline of March 22, is unlikely to yield the results AFGE is hoping for.

“We’re severely underfunded in our operating costs, and current budget talks aren’t signaling that we’re going to get much money this year,” LaPointe said. “So, we’re really getting creative.” ...

Reaction To O'Malley's Decision On Telework

     Tom Temin at Federal News Network has a piece up on the new Commissioner's e-mail to staff decreasing telework for some employees. He is kind enough to refer to this blog by name as "reliable." He quotes several comments made to the post.

    Erich Wagner at Government Executive has a longer piece on the e-mail, particularly to the reaction of Rich Couture, chief negotiator for the American Federation of Government Employees, the union that represents most Social Security employees. Couture expressed relief at what O'Malley had done. The article says that only 4,000 bargaining unit employees would be affected by the announcement. Here's a quote from Couture:

AFGE is pleased to see [O’Malley] is maintaining telework at current levels, and it’s clear that the commissioner recognizes the importance of telework for workers and their work-life balance, as well as its importance for retention and recruitment efforts,” Couture said. “We’re still in a public service crisis fueled by understaffing and attrition, and one way to maintain staffing levels is by offering telework. A commitment to continuing current telework levels for those employees is critical to keeping the agency’s ability to serve the public intact by keeping our employees working here.

     After almost 100 comments, I cut off commenting on the original post since the comments had become so repetitive but, still, I don't think anyone mentioned something about O'Malley's e-mail that caught my eye. Before signing his name to the e-mail, the Commissioner included the phrase "Yours in solidarity." That word, "solidarity," has long been associated with labor unions.

A Golden Oldie

      It’s a slow time in Social Security world so let me reprise a post from almost ten years ago. The themes coming from shills have changed but the problem hasn’t gone away. I’ve become quicker to delete comments that look phony to me. I do note comments now that appear to me to come from employee unions but it’s hard to tell since there are obvious reasons why many Social Security employees agree with union talking points.

Bombarding This Blog — From November 8, 2013

If you read the comments posted on this blog you might come to the impression that everyone knows that:

• Social Security employees do most of their "work" from at home but they don't really work because they're all lazy. The agency has way too many employees.
• Social Security's Administrative Law Judges are particularly lazy. They approve Social Security disability claims because they're lazy. A lot of the judges are crooks in cahoots with crooked disability claimants and their crooked attorneys.
• Most Social Security disability claimants are just crooks trying to scam the program.
• It's way too easy to get on Social Security disability benefits, especially for "mental illness." Anyone can get on Social Security disability benefits for "mental illness" just by pretending to be crazy.
• SSI child's benefits are the biggest scam. It's nothing but lazy, drug addicted mothers coaching their kids to act crazy. They get child after child on SSI child's benefits and then steal the money to support their drug habits.
• Attorneys who represent Social Security claimants are lazy. They're paid huge sums of money by Social Security but they do nothing for their clients. If anything, they're just crooks who assist their crooked clients in perpetrating fraud.
• There is no money in the Social Security trust funds. The money was all stolen by Democrats. The U.S. government bonds that are supposed to be in the trust funds are meaningless pieces of paper.
• Social Security is going bankrupt.You'll never get back the money you paid in. It's all a scam.

     Some of this comes from individuals legitimately expressing their opinions. However, it's long been apparent to me that most of this is coming from people who have been paid to post online comments about Social Security. Often, these people pretend to be Social Security employees, Social Security claimants or Social Security attorneys. Often, their comments just don't ring true because they're pretending to be someone they're not.

     Does it seem outlandish, even paranoid to think that someone would be paid to post slanted comments online? Take a look at this article from the Baltimore Sun. Officials at the University of Maryland had a problem. They wanted to shift the University's athletic programs from the Atlantic Coast Conference to the Big Ten. They knew that many of the University's alumni would be furious with this move. Here's what they did:

Brian Ullmann, the university's assistant vice president for marketing and communications ... wrote that the school planned to "engage professional assistance in helping to drop positive messages into the blogs, comments and message board sites. I will arrange for this service today." ...

Lee Zeidman, the corporate communications consultant who helped Maryland draft letters and talking points, said Wednesday that it is "standard operating procedure" in the business world to weigh in directly on message boards. "There are special PR agencies who work in the digital space who bombard blogs and newspaper sites where no one puts their name," Zeidman said.

     Who would pay online shills to post on Social Security issues? Pete Peterson and the Koch brothers are the prime candidates. They're tossing around tens of millions of dollars in their fight against Social Security. They certainly wouldn't be going after just this blog. It's quite unlikely they know anything about it. They would mostly be going after message boards at news media sites. However, I don't know that there's any other web site quite like this one where there's an ongoing discussion on Social Security issues. If you're doing an online campaign to malign Social Security both as a social program and as an agency, you're going to come here.
    I wonder how someone who works as an online shill would feel about their job. Would it make them proud? Would they tell their children about what they do for a living?

Summary Of AFGE Contract With SSA

     The American Federation of Government Employees, the biggest labor union representing Social Security employees has released a summary of its recent contract with the agency. Read it and you may develop a greater appreciation for the nitty gritty issues that have to be worked out in a labor contract. Lactation may not be your issue but for some agency employees it’s a very big deal. Labor unions exist to help their members deal with issues that an employer may find inconvenient.

SSA And Labor Union Come To Agreement

     From Government Executive:

The Social Security Administration and the nation’s largest federal employee union on Wednesday announced that they had reached a preliminary agreement to update a portion of their collective bargaining agreement and extend the deal until 2029 ...

Although labor-management relationships at federal agencies often vacillate between collaborative and oppositional depending on which political party controls the White House, Social Security management has had a reputation for having at best strained relations with the agency's unions regardless of who’s in charge. And the first two years of the Biden administration were no exception, with officials from the American Federation of Government Employees frequently sparring with management over issues like post-COVID-19 reentry to traditional office spaces, training and benefits aimed at retaining employees during the agency’s ongoing staffing crisis. ...

The updates include a number of immediate tweaks to current policies as well as an avenue for the parties to work collaboratively to find long-term solutions to improve working conditions.

Key to the effort is the establishment of new union-management cooperation councils, both on the national level and for each agency component with a corresponding AFGE council. At the national level, the parties will meet six times a year and each council will be co-chaired by agency senior leaders and AFGE officials. ...

On training, which employees and union officials have complained currently consists primarily of “self-paced” training documents and webinars and leaves new employees ill-prepared for their complex workloads, the contract immediately requires management to provide adequate time to attend and complete sessions, including learning about policy changes that may be transmitted to employees via email, and adds a follow-up survey for employees to take six months after a session. Those surveys will then help the new cooperation councils develop a new training regimen that Couture said he hoped would leverage hybrid work technology to create virtual classroom learning. ...

Union Complaints About Training

     From Government Executive:

... Rich Couture, president of AFGE Council 215 and the union’s chief negotiator with Social Security management, said a poor “self-taught” training model employed by the agency is leaving new hires unprepared for their duties and already looking for work elsewhere. Council 215 represents Office of Hearing Operations staffers.

“We have folks leaving the agency, because the training stinks,” Couture said. “I’d use another word, but we’re in polite company, but the training is terrible. The mentoring, based on an agency focus group report we just got last week, it looked like it was written by us, saying all the same things [we’ve been saying]. There’s not enough time; there’s not enough accommodation to make sure that it actually works. So instead, our folks are telling us, and they’re telling management when they leave, ‘I feel unsupported, I feel unprepared and I feel set up to fail.’ ” ...

Union Negotiations Start On Monday

     Joe Davidson at the Washington Post reports that negotiations between the Social Security Administration and its largest employee union, the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), are scheduled to begin on Monday. According to the Post:

... At Social Security, labor relations still are hung over from the anti-union days of the Trump administration. President Donald Trump used executive orders to sharply weaken the ability of unions to bargain with agencies, including through the unilateral imposition of contract provisions. Union leaders say current Social Security leaders don’t want to give up that authority.

A key example is telework, which Republicans claim there is too much of in the federal workforce. Restrictive telework policies were implemented under Trump and the agency now “doesn’t want to give up its power,” [Rich] Couture [of the AFGE] said in a telephone interview. “It doesn’t want to give up its discretion.”

He added, “they won’t guarantee a telework program or telework levels. They won’t negotiate with us over telework, despite at one point promising to do so. That’s a huge issue that they have shown zero actual interest in fixing with us.”

Another key issue is the “very dire situation in terms of service delivery and how much it’s deteriorated in the last couple of years …” Couture said, “stemming from overwhelming workloads, low employee morale … a lack of competitive pay and benefits.” ...

Warnings From Employee Unions

     From Government Executive:

Officials with the nation’s largest federal employee union on Monday sounded the alarm on the staffing crisis at the Social Security Administration, warning that without a substantial budget increase and fundamental workforce policy changes, customer service could deteriorate even further. ...

At the Social Security Administration, staffing levels are at a 25-year low, despite ever increasing numbers of beneficiaries. ...

Although Congress appropriated around $785 million in additional spending for Social Security in the fiscal 2023 appropriations package, officials at the American Federation of Government Employees said after inflation, the impact of the new funding was “negligible.” Workloads for agency employees remain unsustainable, and around 1,000 workers are leaving the agency per month due to burnout and insufficient pay, benefits and workplace flexibilities. ...

Jessica LaPointe, president of AFGE Council 220, which represents field office, teleservice center and workload support unit workers at the agency, said management’s approach to dealing with the staffing crisis is simply making more people want to quit. The union and management are slated to begin renegotiation on six articles of their collective bargaining agreement next week.

“Hiring is down 50% since 2010, promotions are down 25%, and staffing is at a 25-year low,” she said. “Management has assigned workers to intake for most of the work week, so back-end work is now piling up, and managers are resorting to bullying tactics like leveraging leave, micromanagement and surveilling employees’ use of the bathroom to attempt to control back- and front-end productivity of workers . . . Employees are being treated like disposable cogs in a machine, and when an employee burns out and quits, the agency just seeks to replace them.” ...

LaPointe said that the union’s internal survey found that 8% of respondents knew a coworker who died by suicide at least in part due to work-related stress. ...

Edwin Osorio, first vice president of AFGE Council 220, said at least part of the blame can be placed at the feet of Kijakazi, who he said has shown a lack of leadership while atop the agency. ...

Union Decries Micromanagement

    From Government Executive:

Members of the nation’s largest federal employee union on Wednesday rallied outside of the headquarters of the Social Security Administration near Baltimore, demanding more funding and staffing for the agency, as well as reform of agency leadership and workforce policies. ...

Union officials on Wednesday described an agency in a vicious cycle, where insufficient funding amid growing workloads has led managers to micromanage overworked and underpaid employees, burning them out until they quit, further increasing the output expectations on the dwindling workforce that remains. This is exacerbated, they said, by a refusal to act to modernize the agency’s workflows or provide workplace flexibilities that have become the norm not just in the private sector, but elsewhere in the federal government. ...

According to a survey of union members commissioned by AFGE Council 220, 43% of respondents reported that they were planning to leave the agency within the next 12 months, including 26% of respondents who said they were strongly considering it. And 76% of respondents said that the volume of their workload is an impairment to their ability to perform their duties. ...

Union Seeks Additional Funding For SSA

     From Federal News Network:

Social Security Administration employees are back in the office, but understaffing and a restrictive telework policy are making them less productive, according to one of its unions, and may lead to an exodus of more employees.

The American Federation of Government Employees Council 220, which represents SSA employees who work in field offices and teleservice centers, is asking Congress for $16.5 billion in “emergency funding” to support SSA for the rest of fiscal 2023. ...

Sherry Jackson, AFGE Council 220’s second vice president and legislative action coordinator, said during a virtual town hall Thursday that SSA is running with 4,000 fewer field office and teleservice center employees than it did 12 years ago. ...

The emergency funding request amounts to a $1.7 billion increase above the Biden administration’s fiscal 2023 budget request for SSA. Congress passed a continuing resolution that lasts through Dec. 16 and is still working out a comprehensive spending deal for the rest of FY 2023. ...