Another Social Security Employee Speaks Out

     A letter to the editor of the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette:

Recently, Commissioner of the Social Security Administration Andrew Saul announced that offices would be open all day on Wednesdays nationwide. Currently, offices are closed on Wednesday afternoons.  

I have worked for Social Security for 18 years and currently work in a local field office. There will be consequences to this new policy that Saul did not disclose. Local workloads will increase. Staff currently use Wednesday afternoons to reduce workloads. That time will now be spent taking in more work with even less time to process it. Processing times will increase as the workloads increase.  

Social Security staff take our service to the public seriously, and we want to do the best job we can. However, as workloads continue to increase, so does the pressure to process the work more quickly in less time. There will be a significant increase in employees who retire or leave as a result of the added stress. The majority of employees who leave are usually not replaced and it takes years for new employees to become proficient because of the complex and technical nature of the job. The employees who remain are even more stressed and the cycle continues. 

The problem started when the agency made the poor decision to cut staffing when workloads increased as baby boomers aged. The problem will continue until the agency decides to hire enough frontline employees for us to be able to do our jobs correctly and provide the level of service the public deserves. With enough staffing, we could be open all day on Wednesday and allow time for employees to process work in a timely manner.

I feel the work I do is important, and I want to provide the best service to the American public. However, Saul is implementing a policy that will make my job more difficult and ultimately affect the service to the American public. 

Karime Masson

Might Be Useful

     Social Security has posted a list of telephone numbers for all of its field offices as of October 29, 2019.

Problems With Government Benefits Cards

     From CBS Chicago:

A debit card nightmare has left an 80-year-old Chicago woman with no way to access her Social Security money. 

Her family said it has been going on for weeks, with no solutions from the government or the card company. ...

LaShawna Walker said she has had to call Direct Express far too often – trying to activate her 80-year-old grandmother Ida Walker’s debit card. ...

On its website, Direct Express states that its debit card is offered to those who get federal benefits electronically. LaShawna Walker said when her father called the Social Security Administration directly, an employee acknowledged there were Direct Express issues.

“They told my dad that they’re having a lot of problems. People are calling in and complaining about the problems that they’re having with the cards,” she said.

The cards that are affected have number starting with 5332 – as Ida Walker’s cards do. ...

An SSA spokesman said he would look into the matter, and later referred her to the Treasury Department for concerns about Direct Express. ...

My Top Eight List

     I've finally gotten around to the sort of list you've seen a lot of in the last couple of weeks -- the most important things that have happened in the Social Security world in the last decade. Below is my list but feel free to post your own list. I came up with eight and didn't want to pad it to make it ten.

1. Constant administrative under-funding of the Social Security Administration accompanied by frequent shutdown threats and occasional actual shutdowns. Agency performance suffered as a result. Service has deteriorated to levels that would have once been thought unimaginable;
2. After the number of Social Security disability claims soared in the 2000-2009 decade, the number of claims started declining in 2010. That decline is continuing. We think we know why claims soared from 2000-2009 -- primarily the aging of the baby boomer population -- but no one has a good handle on why the number of disability claims filed has gone down so much since then or why the decline continues;
3. The Eric Conn debacle which led to a general climate of hostility towards Social Security disability claimants;
4. Social Security went more than six years without a confirmed Social Security Commissioner because Republican Senators wouldn't confirm an Obama nominee and Trump was so slow in nominating anyone;
5. The ongoing story of Social Security's Disability Case Processing System (DCPS) which may or may not ever work;
6. The deal to extend the life of the Social Security Disability Insurance Trust Fund;
7. Social Security's ongoing refusal to deal with the obsolescence of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles;
8. The collapse of Binder and Binder. Yes, I know there's a stub of Binder and Binder left but it's nothing like what it was. A 60 Minutes hit piece hurt Binder and Binder but the bigger problem was that it was based upon a business model that could not succeed at a time when the number of disability claims was going down and it was becoming progressively more difficult to get a claim approved. The ironic thing was that the 60 Minutes hit piece damaged Social Security attorneys generally even though we were appalled by Binder and Binder long before the rest of the world was. At least the original owners sold out to a private equity company -- which I still find astounding -- before the bottom dropped out and have now bought back the stub.

So How Do You Do Business With This Agency?

     A few years ago, Social Security established an attorney call center, 877-626-6363, that attorneys could call about problems getting their clients who are under 55 paid. An agency website still lists the number but it's not working. Either you get a fast busy signal or it just rings and rings. It's not like it's hard to get through. It's essentially impossible. Try calling it yourself.

     My advice to Social Security is to just take the number off your website and admit that you don't have the personnel to answer your phones. They won't take that advice, though, because it's not politically correct to admit this in a Republican Administration. Exhortations to staff to work harder and smarter are the Republican answer to all staff shortages while taking every action possible to antagonize the staff needed to actually do the work.

Happy New Year

OHO Backlogs Continue To Dwindle

This was obtained from Social Security by the National Organization of Social Security Claimants Representatives (NOSSCR) and published in its newsletter, which is not available online to non-members.

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Not Such A Good Place To Work

     Each year Federal News Network ranks agencies on their Best Places to Work list. This is based upon surveys done by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM). For 2019, Social Security ranked near the bottom in the large agency category, a significant downgrade from 2018. I wonder how Social Security will rank on the 2020 list.

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