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.

An Inflection Point? Maybe We'll Know In Another Year Or Two Or Three

     Social Security has released updated statistics showing that the number of disability claims filed in calendar year 2019 was essentially the same as in 2018. This is a big change. In every year between 2011 and 2018 the number of new claims declined significantly, totaling a 32% decline over these years. Could this be an inflection point? It may be years until we know for sure.

      You have to be careful in reading Social Security's table. First, two numbers are presented on number of claims filed, Field Office Receipts and Initial DDS Receipts. Field Office Receipts include many claims that were quickly denied on technical grounds such as the claimant failing to meet the earnings requirement. Changes in agency practices as well as the spread of internet filing of claims affect the number of technical denials. I think the Field Office Receipts numbers should be ignored. The Initial DDS Receipts numbers are the important ones. These are the cases that are actually adjudicated on the merits. Second, pay close attention to the footnotes which contain this caution: 

Because the application data are tabulated on a weekly basis, some months include 5 weeks of data while others include only 4 weeks. This weekly method of tabulation accounts for much of the month-to-month variation in the monthly application data. This method also occasionally causes quarterly data to have either 12 or 14 weeks of data instead of 13 weeks, annual data may include an extra week of data.

This means that there's no point in paying attention to the monthly or even quarterly numbers. Even the yearly numbers may be a little distorted by having one week more or less than the prior year. Thus, even though the Initial DDS Receipts were recorded as being up by 9,195 in 2019 over 2018, I think it would be more accurate to say that there was almost no change from 2018 to 2019 since we don't know how many weeks were used for either 2018 or 2019. 

     Here's Social Security's graph of the data, which does suggest to me an inflection point but maybe that's what I want to see. Maybe the 2019 data will turn out to have been nothing more than a blip:

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