Guidance Coming Soon On Telework

      From the Washington Post:

As the Biden administration contemplates how to return the massive federal workforce to the office, government officials are moving to make a pandemic experiment permanent by allowing more employees than ever to work from home — a sweeping cultural change that would have been unthinkable a year ago. ...

Notice of the change is expected in June, when the administration is set to release long-awaited guidance to agencies about when and how many federal employees can return to the office — likely in hybrid workplaces that combine in-person and at-home options, according to officials and memos obtained by The Washington Post. The bulletin is expected to address remote work policies in the immediate and long term.

 “We anticipate this guidance will leave room for decision-making at departments and agencies, to provide maximum flexibility for defining work requirements to meet mission and workforce needs,” said a senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because plans have not yet been finalized. ...

How much other federal employees will be able to work from home will be up to individual agencies and is likely to vary widely depending on employee needs, manager preferences and the department’s mission, officials said. ...

Mark Hinkle, a Social Security Administration spokesman, said in an email that the agency is “carefully and incrementally increasing the number of employees working in our local field offices” to help whittle down workloads and is beginning to increase in-office appointments. ...

If You Have To Ask The Question, You Really Are A Fool

      The Motley Fool asks “Is Bitcoin Safer For Retirement Than Social Security?”

ALJ Union And Social Security At Odds

     From Government Executive:

An independent arbitrator this week took the rare step of ordering the Social Security Administration and a union representing administrative law judges to completely redo negotiations on a new contract, after he found several instances of illegal bad faith bargaining by the agency.

In a decision dated May 17, Arbitrator John T. Nicholas found that management at the agency engaged in unfair labor practices in relation to five different articles of its contract negotiations with the Association of Administrative Law Judges. The ruling marks the third instance in which an arbitrator has found instances of malfeasance on the part of management at the Social Security Administration in connection with their negotiations with the judges’ union.

In those previous cases, the arbitrator issued narrow awards to the union, such as requiring the agency to provide previously improperly withheld information and rescind an effort to implement a partial contract. But Nicholas instructed the parties to completely restart the contract negotiation process from the beginning with negotiations on ground rules for bargaining over an entirely new contract. ...

 The arbitrator also found that the Social Security Administration engaged in “surface level” bargaining on official time, in essence making tweaks to their proposal without actually trying to find a solution amenable to both parties, and he found the agency engaged in bad faith bargaining in its negotiations over provisions intended to protect the judges’ judicial function. ...

In a statement, Social Security Administration spokesman Mark Hinkle downplayed the potential impact of the arbitrator’s ruling, and accused the judges’ union of blocking efforts to negotiate a new contract.

“The arbitration decision was substantively moot by the time the decision was issued, as SSA has offered the AALJ the opportunity to renegotiate the entire CBA on several occasions,” Hinkle said. “In fact, the agency’s chief spokesperson for these negotiations has sent at least four communications making that offer to the AALJ chief negotiator . . . Despite these repeated efforts, AALJ has refused to even meet with the agency.” ...

     Melissa McIntosh, the president of the ALJ union, recently appeared on Tom Temin's show on WFED. The posted transcript demonstrates the depth of the gap between union and management at Social Security.

Stimulus Payments Cause Problems For Some SSI Recipients

     From HuffPost:

Stimulus payments aren’t supposed to count against eligibility for social insurance programs like disability benefits, but some people might have lost benefits because of too much money in their bank accounts.

The Social Security Administration has suspended disability benefits for some Supplemental Security Income recipients because the stimulus payments pushed their bank accounts above the program’s archaic $2,000 limit, according to legal aid attorneys. ...
It’s likely that relatively few of the program’s nearly 8 million beneficiaries have been affected. ...

Everyone on SSI is subject to the resource limit, which hasn’t been updated since 1989. It’s $2,000 for individuals and $3,000 for couples, with exclusions for a home, a car and certain other assets. 

Because the coronavirus stimulus payments are technically tax credits, they shouldn’t have affected eligibility for any social program, whether it’s food benefits or Social Security. Under federal law, tax credits don’t count as income or “resources” for eligibility purposes within a year of their receipt.

But the Social Security Administration is a huge agency with lots of employees, and it’s possible some have made mistakes, said Stacy Cloyd, director of policy and administrative advocacy with the National Organization of Social Security Claimants’ Representatives. What should happen, Cloyd said, is that when the agency sees more than $2,000 in someone’s bank account ― the overall balance is all the agency sees ― it should investigate and then back off if the cash came from a tax rebate within the past year.

 “If the resource limit were $10,000 this would be a lot less of an issue,” Cloyd said. President Joe Biden has proposed updating the asset limit, but Democrats haven’t yet reintroduced their bill to change the policy. ...

Too Cute?

     I don't know how, if at all, this ever impacts Social Security but the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has issued an interesting opinion on remand from the Supreme Court in the case of CFPB v. Seila Law. The Court held that once the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Board knew that she could be removed from office by the President without cause, her tenure in office became constitutional. Moreover, she could ratify her prior actions taken before the Supreme Court opinion in Seila Law. Thus, the Supreme Court opinion in the Seila Law case becomes meaningless as far as Seila Law itself is concerned. I'm not sure how the Supreme Court will see this but it seems a bit too cute to me. How do you say that this is an important constitutional issue and then say, never mind, we're not going to let it have real world consequences?

     To this point, as far as I know, Andrew Saul hasn't acknowledged that Seila Law even applies to him, nor has the White House said anything on the subject. Has Social Security filed a brief on the Seila Law issue yet in federal court?

    

Message To SSA Employees On Reopening

      Federal News Network reports that Social Security sent the following message to its employees yesterday:

You may have seen the recent update from the CDC about people who are fully vaccinated. As we have said all along, we will continue to follow government-wide and CDC guidance. We are getting additional information from the Safer Federal Workforce Task Force and will update you as soon as possible about changes. We will also meet all applicable labor obligations.

Masks No Longer Required In Federal Offices

      From Government Executive:

Following the new public health guidance issued last week, the White House said fully vaccinated federal employees, contractors and visitors are no longer required to wear masks in federal buildings. 

The Office of Management and Budget sent all federal agencies an email to supplement the updated guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday, which said vaccinated individuals do not need masks outside and in most indoor settings ... 

“For now, this change related to masking is the only change to federal workplace COVID-19 safety guidance – maximum telework and workplace occupancy limits remain in place – but we will continue to update based on public health guidance,” said OMB’s message. “If you are not fully vaccinated (at least two weeks past your final dose), please continue to wear a mask consistent with the requirements set forth in your agency workplace safety plan.”  ... 

“OMB, through the President’s Management Council, with [the Office of Personnel Management] and [General Services Administration], will continue to work with your agencies on the planning already underway related to the federal personnel policies and work environment for after it is safe for increased return of federal workers to the physical workplace,” said the email ...

People Just Won't Behave Like Jason Fichnter Wants Them To

      Jason Fichtner is a mainstream Republican economist specializing in retirement issues. He worked at Social Security during the George W. Bush Administration. He's been associated with the Mercatus Center, a Koch brothers financed think tank. He's recently put out a "White Paper" on Creating A New Retirement Security Framework.  Fichtner identifies real problems. Traditional defined benefit retirement plans are going, going, gone. People aren't saving much for retirement. The money they do save isn't generating much safe retirement income because interest rates are so low. Annuities would help some but people are suspicious of them. Delaying going on Social Security would help but most folks don't wait until full retirement age much less until age 70. Social Security has long term financing problems. What are Fichtner's solutions: Try harder to persuade people to delay going on Social Security retirement benefits and try harder to persuade people to use annuities for retirement income.

     I think that Fichtner's solution to the problems he identifies are completely inadequate. In fact, I'd call them almost useless. We're not going to change people's retirement behavior in fundamental ways. People already have plenty of encouragement to retire later but they just don't want to. If people don't like annuities, they don't like annuities. You're not going to harangue people into liking annuities.

     I see only one workable solution to the problems that Fichtner identifies -- beef up Social Security. Improve its long term financing. Increase its benefits significantly.  That would work. Why can't Fichtner bring himself to mention improving Social Security even as a possibility? The man has on right wing blinders. He can't see the obvious because it doesn't fit into his ideology.