From a July 16 letter from Witold Skwierczynski, the President of Council 220 of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) which will shortly open contract negotiations with Social Security, to Michael Astrue, Commissioner of Social Security:
Recently SSA has received a great deal of adverse publicity as a result of the Management Tango Conference in Phoenix AZ the week of July 6, 2009. ...
AFGE is outraged that you would condone, approve and participate in such an extravagant waste of taxpayer dollars. The Union is especially disturbed that SSA would spend such enormous sums of taxpayer dollars to treat managers to the comforts of a luxurious resort that featured such amenities as 8 swimming pools, 7 tennis courts, two 18 hole golf courses, a spa and 5 restaurants. ...
AFGE has discovered that the Phoenix tango is not an isolated event. Management officials have conducted or are scheduled to conduct in the near future similar management conferences for hundreds of SSA management officials at sites such as Ft. Lauderdale FL, San Francisco CA, San Antonio TX, Boston MA, Hunt Valley MD, New Orleans LA, New York City, Kansas City MO, Bellevue WA and Austin TX . SSA is apparently spending $ millions in travel and per diem costs, hotel set up fees and salaries for participants to these events. Although AFGE has not seen agendas for all these conferences, if the Phoenix meeting agenda is reflective of the conference agendas, these meetings constitute gross misuse of SSA’s appropriated funds. ... Scheduling 1 ¾ hour lunches during which managers danced and boogied on government time is outrageous.
While virtually all the management officials in the San Francisco region were in Phoenix networking, dancing and taking extended catered lunches, SSI recipients were informed that SSA could not issue emergency payments to them because there were no management officials available to approve such payments. One office even posted a sign to that effect. ...
While the Agency is demanding more resources from Congress to process increasing workloads and eliminating backlogs, you have created a situation in which SSA is now a subject of public ridicule regarding the wasteful expenditure of tax dollars for frivolous management conferences. ...
Two years ago you cancelled sending 40 year SSA employee’s travel to Baltimore to attend the awards ceremony where they were to receive their 40 year certificates. SSA had paid for these trips in the past as a reward and in appreciation of the long time service of such veteran SSA employees. You cancelled these trips to Baltimore for employees in the field to receive their awards to save money.