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.
Feb 26, 2025
Union On Threat Of RIFs
50% Staff Reduction Coming?
From The American Prospect:
The Acting Commissioner of the Social Security Administration (SSA) requested in a meeting on Tuesday that managers present him with a plan for a 50 percent reduction in staff, a mass firing that could affect tens of thousands of employees across the country. ...
“I’m getting conflicting reports on what was discussed in that meeting,” said Rich Couture, spokesperson for the Social Security General Committee of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), adding that some reports indicated that field offices would be spared. But one manager present at the meeting indicated that the 50 percent trim was at all levels. And cuts that have dribbled out over the past several days appear to impact field offices where a majority of SSA employees work. ...
In an email to the Prospect, SSA would not confirm any reductions in its workforce beyond the abolition of two small internal offices announced this week. “We have not set any reduction targets, however we will continue to pursue efficiencies within the agency and align like missions,” an SSA spokesperson said. “We have no further information at this time.” ...
Anything like this would, of course, render the Social Security Administration immediately incapable of carrying out any of its functions. This might not be popular with voters.
SSA Believes They Can Get Out “Most” WEP/GPO Payments By End Of March
From a press release:
Today, the Social Security Administration announced it is immediately beginning to pay retroactive benefits and will increase monthly benefit payments to people whose benefits have been affected by the Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP) and Government Pension Offset (GPO). These provisions reduced or eliminated the Social Security benefits for over 3.2 million people who receive a pension based on work that was not covered by Social Security (a "non-covered pension") because they did not pay Social Security taxes. The Social Security Fairness Act ends WEP and GPO. …
“The agency’s original estimate of taking a year or more now will only apply to complex cases that cannot be processed by automation. The American people deserve to get their due benefits as quickly as possible.” …
Many beneficiaries will be due a retroactive payment because the WEP and GPO offset no longer apply as of January 2024. Most people will receive their one-time retroactive payment by the end of March, which will be deposited into their bank account on record with Social Security.
Many of these people will also receive higher monthly benefits, which will first be reflected in the benefit payment they receive in April. Depending on factors such as the type of Social Security benefit received and the amount of the person's pension, the change in payment amount will vary from person to person.
Anyone whose monthly benefit is adjusted, or who will get a retroactive payment, will receive a mailed notice from Social Security explaining the benefit change or retroactive payment. Most people will receive their retroactive payment two to three weeks before they receive their notice in the mail, because the President understands how important it is to pay people what they are due right away. Social Security is expediting payments using automation and will continue to handle many complex cases that must be done manually, on an individual case-by-case basis. Those complex cases will take additional time to update the beneficiary record and pay the correct benefits.
Social Security urges beneficiaries to wait until April to ask about the status of their retroactive payment, since these payments will process incrementally into March. Since the new monthly payment amount will begin with the April payment, beneficiaries should wait until after receiving their April payment, before contacting Social Security with questions about their monthly benefit amount. …
Most could mean 51%. Just how many will require manual calculation? Where will the staff come from to do those manual calculations?
Feb 25, 2025
Office Of Civil Rights Abolished; Employees Fired
The Office of Civil Rights at Social Security has been abolished. The employees of that office have been placed on Administrative Leave for 30 days before being fired.
Performative Cruelty
The lesson I take from this is to be unafraid or at least to not betray fear. Fear feeds Trump. Fight back as best you can. Of course it’s not hard for me to affect fearlessness. I’m in the process of retiring. (I plan to continue the blog.) I know it’s terribly difficult for those with legitimate fears of harm and that’s many, perhaps most, Social Security employees.
I will say that while the performative cruelty was ugly during the first Trump Administration and is much uglier this time around, it necessarily inspires great revulsion among many. Republican lawmakers are already facing hostile receptions when they hold town halls. Those matter. Remember the Tea Party? The Trump Administration is faring extremely poorly in court. Maybe the Supreme Court will bail out Trump every time but I strongly doubt it. The legal bad faith from this Administration is just stunning. I’ve been practicing law for almost 50 years. Bad faith is the kiss of death in anything other than the very short term. It may help you win one battle but it will definitely lose you the war. Any attorney who represents clients in the way that the Trump Administration’s attorneys are doing will be extraordinarily unsuccessful. See Trump’s legal efforts to overturn the 2020 election results. It’s no accident that attorneys who went down this road were completely unsuccessful and some lost their law licenses and a few are facing criminal prosecution.
Feb 24, 2025
Office Of Transformation Closes; Employees Placed On Administrative Leave
From a press release:
The Social Security Administration today announced the closing of a component within the agency, the Office of Transformation. Employees in this office will be put on administrative leave effective today. …
A Win For Government Employees
From Government Executive:
An independent federal oversight agency has deemed at least some of President Trump’s mass firings of probationary period employees unlawful, creating a pathway for those employees to regain their jobs.
The Office of Special Counsel, the agency responsible for investigating illegal actions taken against federal employees, issued its decision for six employees, each at different agencies. While the decision was technically limited in scope, it could have immediate impact on all terminated staff at those six agencies and could set a wide-ranging precedent across government. It has not been made public and was provided to Government Executive by a source within the government. OSC, which did not provide the document to Government Executive, verified its authenticity. ...
Trump earlier this month fired [Special Counsel] Dellinger from his job, but a federal court reversed that decision and reinstated him to his post. The Trump administration has challenged that ruling up to the Supreme Court, but justices there last week declined to overturn Dellinger’s reinstatement. ...
After publication of this story, OSC released a statement confirming its findings and suggesting Dellinger is actively contemplating expanding them to include far more federal workers.
"The special counsel believes other probationary employees are similarly situated to the six workers for whom he currently is seeking relief," OSC said. "Dellinger is considering ways to seek relief for a broader group without the need for individual filings with OSC." ...
Tense Times In Baltimore
From the Baltimore Banner:
... “Everything was smooth and very positive, and it seemed like this was a great place to work. But now, no one knows anything,” said a Baltimore-area Social Security employee who has been with the agency less than a year. “I still don’t know if I’m going to have a job.”
That employee, as well as other current Social Security workers, asked for anonymity out of fear of being targeted by the administration. ...
The Trump administration said it is terminating most probationary workers across federal agencies. About 4% of Social Security’s 58,627 employees nationwide had less than one year on the job as of spring 2024, according to the most recent federal data available. ...
I can't copy them here but the photos that accompany this article are evocative and depressing, more so than the writing and the writing is good.
Feb 23, 2025
A Message To Staff
From: ^Human Resources Internal Communications
COVID Killed 1.7 Million In U.S.; Saves $205 Billion For Social Security
From The Effect Of US COVID-19 Excess Mortality On Social Security Outlays, a study by Hanke Heun-Johnson, Darius Lakdawalla, Julian Reif and Bryan Tysinger:
The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in significant excess mortality among the US population, impacting the future outlays of the US Social Security Administration (SSA) Old Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance (OASDI) program. This study aimed to estimate the net effects of pandemic-induced excess deaths on OASDI liabilities ... The pandemic resulted in approximately 1.7 million excess deaths among individuals aged 25 and older between 2020 and 2023. These premature deaths reduced future retirement payments, which increased the Social Security fund by $294 billion. However, this gain was offset by reductions in future payroll tax flows ($58 billion) and increased payments to surviving spouses and children ($32 billion), resulting in a net impact of $205 billion. ...
For better or worse, DOGE has probably ended this sort of research.
Feb 22, 2025
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 AmericansSuit filed on heels of SSA Acting Head’s Departure Amid Concerns about DOGE Access to DataBaltimore, 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. ..
More On The Elevation Of Dudek — With A Small Role For Andrew Saul
From Lisa Rein at the Washington Post:
Leaders of the Social Security Administration had just opened an investigation into a career employee they believed was improperly sharing information with Elon Musk’s cost-cutting team when President Donald Trump elevated the employee this week to acting commissioner. …
It’s not clear what data Dudek shared, but his actions raised enough alarm that he may have violated privacy and tax laws that senior officials placed him on paid leave as they launched their investigation. The officials, including attorneys in the general counsel’s office, also were notified late last week that Dudek had sent harassing emails to employees in the agency’s personnel and security divisions to rush them to let several engineers hired by DOGE start work and gain access to agency computer systems. The officials pushed back, saying that they had not completed background investigations into the new hires….
When the [DOGE] team learned last week that Dudek would be investigated, the chief information officer called acting commissioner Michelle King to demand answers. Then, on the Sunday of Presidents’ Day weekend, King received an email announcing that Trump had appointed Dudek to replace her. After being effectively forced out, King abruptly retired after three decades of service, the three individuals said. Her acting chief of staff, Tiffany Flick, also retired. …
In his first days on the job, Dudek has made bold moves that are highly unusual for someone in an acting role. He has slashed the agency’s research program, restructured numerous departments, announced the hires of new political staff, and made personnel changes that include the demotion of the career senior executive who was involved in placing him on paid leave last week, according to internal personnel announcements obtained by The Washington Post. …
“If I were them, I would want to get my permanent person in as fast as possible,” said Andrew Saul, who served as Social Security commissioner during Trump’s first term. “The situation is not good, obviously.” Saul said he recommended King, then deputy commissioner for operations, to Trump’s transition team after his election in November. “I knew she’d hold the ship down.” …
Feb 21, 2025
SSA Ending External Research
The Social Security Administration today announced the termination of their Retirement and Disability Research Consortium (RDRC) cooperative agreements. This action supports the President's Executive Order, Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing.
“Terminating our RDRC cooperative agreements aligns with President Trump's priorities to end fraudulent and wasteful initiatives and contracts,” said Social Security's Acting Commissioner Lee Dudek. “We will continue to root out waste and abuse to earn back America's trust and confidence in our agency.”
Social Security previously entered into RDRC cooperative agreements with research centers that included a focus on research addressing DEI in Social Security, retirement, and disability policy. Terminating these cooperative agreements results in about $15 million dollars in cost savings for hardworking Americans in fiscal year 2025.
My recollection is that money has been specifically appropriated for external research. If so,this would be an example of Presidential impoundment, a very dubious legal theory. I believe this hurts Boston College and the University of Michigan the hardest.
Trump Administration Says ALJs May Be Fired At Will
From the New York Times:
The Trump administration told Congress on Thursday that it believed President Trump had the constitutional power to summarily fire administrative law judges at will, despite a statute that protects such officials from being removed without a cause like misconduct. …
To insulate the officials from political interference, Congress enacted a statute that says disciplinary action, including firings, may be taken against such judges “only for good cause established and determined by the Merit Systems Protection Board on the record after opportunity for hearing before the board.”
Ms. Harris’s letter to Congress also brought to wider attention that the Justice Department had said it would no longer defend the constitutionality of the law protecting administrative law judges in a little-noticed Feb. 11 filing in an appeals court case. …
The Social Security Administration employs the vast majority of federal ALJs.
The Rise Of Dudek
From the Wall Street Journal:
Leland Dudek had spent more than a decade at the Social Security Administration, including time overseeing a fraud investigation office, but was largely unknown to senior executives at the agency.
Just last week, in a now-deleted LinkedIn post, Dudek said that he was put on administrative leave for cooperating with Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.
“I confess. I bullied agency executives, shared executive contact information, and circumvented the chain of command to connect DOGE with the people who get stuff done,” he wrote in the post, which was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. …
[Michelle] King was informed in an email Sunday morning that Dudek had been elevated to acting commissioner and she decided to retire from the agency after three decades, some of the people said.
Dudek’s elevation to acting commissioner followed a tumultuous period in which members of Social Security’s leadership team grew concerned about the manner in which he was helping DOGE personnel, some of the people said. They had received information that Dudek had been sharing information with nonagency personnel beginning in December, before Trump’s inauguration, and heard complaints from career staff who said he had pressured them to help DOGE representatives, these people said. …
Feb 20, 2025
Only 41 Employees Given Job Ultimatum
From Government Executive:
The Social Security Administration on Thursday gave 41 probationary employees in the agency’s headquarters and regional offices the choice to be reassigned to frontline agency work or to get caught up in the ongoing governmentwide purge of recently hired or promoted workers….
Rich Couture, spokesman for the American Federation of Government Employees’ Social Security General Committee, which represents more than 40,000 SSA employees, confirmed the initiative and said while the union appreciates giving probationary workers who weren’t subject to the agency’s exemptions a chance to stay employed, the agency needs more workers, not fewer.
“We are grateful that the probationary employees on the front line were not terminated,” he said. “With 10,000 new beneficiaries each day and a 50-year low in staffing, now is the time to be adding to our frontline staff . . . Should all [of the 41 probationary employees] accept reassignment, we still need to prevent attrition and add 20,0000 new hires to be able to deliver Americans their earned benefits efficiently and accurately.”
