More On Reopening Agreements With Unions

      From Federal News Network:

... The National Treasury Employees Union, which represents employees in SSA’s Office of Hearing Operations, said NTEU Chapter 224 has negotiated an agreement that increases telework opportunities for all employees for the first six months of the reentry back into the workplace, extends scheduling flexibilities and maximizes safety for those who return to the office.

NTEU President Tony Reardon said in a statement Thursday the union has not yet received a 30-day notice of exactly when the reentry process will begin ...

“NTEU expects the agency will revisit telework, and bargain as appropriate, on extending and expanding telework opportunities in the future,” Reardon said. ...

AFGE [American Federation of Government Employees, which represents most SSA employees] and SSA, in a memorandum of understanding, agree to hold several meetings over component-level reentry, workplace safety and evaluation period issues.

The first of these reentry meetings will take place no later than Feb. 1. The agreement requires two follow-up meetings should be completed no later than March 1.

The memo specifies that a phased reentry for AFGE bargaining unit employees will begin no earlier than 30 days after the agreement is implemented.

Within seven days of the final reentry meeting, the memo states AFGE may submit a bargaining request to address “unresolved issues.” ...

As long as the MOU remains in effect, all AFGE employees, contractors, visitors and members of the public will be required to wear masks inside SSA facilities, regardless of vaccination status. ...

     And more from Government Executive:

...  According to an agreement reached between the Social Security Administration and the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents workers across several of the agency’s subcomponents, the current target date for employees to return to the office is March 30, although that date can be postponed if there is another spike in COVID-19 cases.

 The deal also provides AFGE’s various component-level councils and locals the opportunity to bargain over reentry issues specific to their offices between now and March 1, something the union has been pushing for since last year. And it sets up a framework for the union and management to continue to negotiate for six months after reentry begins over operational and personnel policies, including over issues like post-pandemic telework. ...

The agreement with AFGE also eliminates some pre-pandemic barriers to telework instituted under a Federal Service Impasses Panel-mandated contract during the Trump administration, including so-called "core days" in which every employee was expected to report to the office, and the use of minor reprimands to bar employees from working from home altogether. ...

SSA Reaches Reopening Agreements With All Three Labor Unions

     A press release:

Statement from Kilolo Kijakazi, Acting Commissioner of Social Security, about Agency Reentry

“I am very pleased to share that we have successfully reached agreement with our three labor unions on our reentry plan.

This will be a significant step toward improving access to our services as we implement this plan.

I want to thank our labor representatives for working with management to achieve this outcome, which will help us better serve the public.

I also want to thank the public and our employees for their patience during this unprecedented time.

I know the public will have questions about what this means to them.

For now, you should continue to reach us online at www.socialsecurity.gov or by calling our National 800 Number or your local office. We will let you know when we are able to restore additional services.”

Memorandum Of Understanding Between ALJ Union And SSA

     NOSSCR has obtained a copy of the memorandum of understanding between the union representing Administrative Law Judges (ALJs) and the Social Security Administration. I suppose I may as well post the link here. 

     I guess we all hope that a lot of what's in this agreement will turn out to be overkill because after the Omicron variant subsides almost everyone will have some degree of immunity to Covid and the number of Covid cases and their severity will die down to the point that the threat is similar to the threat posed by seasonal influenza. I'm really, really tired of Covid and so are you.

When I Say Attorneys Representing Social Security Claimants Are Hurting, I'm Not Kidding

     Social Security has posted final numbers showing total fees paid to attorneys for representing claimants in 2021. Let's do a comparison with the last two years:

• 2019: 390,809 fees were paid for a total of $1,214,557,861. 
  
• 2020: 360,493 fees were paid, down 8% from 2019. The total fees paid were $1,081,523,523, down 11% from 2019.
• 2021: 296,847 fees were paid, down 18% from 2020 and down 24% from 2019. The total fees paid were $932,887,938, down 14% from 2020 and down 23% from 2020.
  

      One big problem is that even though the number of new claims filed has gone down significantly, the number of clients at Social Security law firms hasn't gone down much because cases are so piled up at the initial and reconsideration levels, not to mention the huge backlogs of claimants waiting to be paid after favorable decisions. Our workloads are still there even though our gross receipts have plummeted. There are fewer hearings but more effort expended trying to make sure Social Security does what it is supposed to do. In the current environment many cases get sidetracked for months. Some get lost. Overwhelmed agency employees do little to sort out these problems. Social Security employees may get tired of lawyers repeatedly contacting them about cases but if you're on the receiving end, it's impossible to tell a case that's just in a backlog pile from one that's not even in the pile.

     Contrary to what many Social Security employees may think, representing Social Security claimants is a high overhead, low profit margin business in the best of times. Everybody need normality at Social Security. Social Security attorneys also need and deserve a cost of living adjustment in the maximum attorney fee under the fee agreement process.

ALJs To Start Returning To Their Offices In May

Welcome Back!

      The ALJ Discussion Forum is a message board for Social Security Administrative Law Judges (ALJs) and wannabe ALJs. It's independent of the Social Security Administration. Yesterday, reports began to be published on the message board about an e-mail that ALJ union members received telling them of an agreement to allow ALJs to return to their offices on a voluntary basis beginning on May 4 with return required in June. However, ALJs will only be required to come in on days on which they have hearings. The reports on the board indicate that there's still no agreement with the larger AFGE union that includes most non-ALJ personnel at Social Security.

A Question

      I have cases at the Appeals Council whose status is variously given in ERE as Assigned to Adjudicator, Assigned to Analyst and Case Workup. What is the difference? What can I tell from these case statuses? Anything?

Slow Progress In Obtaining And Analyzing Medical Records Via IT

      From a recent report by Social Security's Office of Inspector General (OIG):

Despite spending more than 10 years trying to increase the number of medical records received through health IT, SSA still receives most records in paper or ERE format. In the Fiscal Year (FY) that ended on September 30, 2020, SSA received only 11 percent of medical records through health IT. 

SSA experienced a decreasing trend in adding new health IT partners from 56 in FY 2018 to 12 in FY 2021 (as of August). During this time, SSA reduced the number of staff and contractors involved in health IT outreach and did not fully fund projects to increase electronic medical evidence. Also, expanding the number of health IT records by adding new partners is not a unilateral decision made by SSA, as prospective partners must be willing and able to meet SSA’s technical requirements, and COVID-19 was a factor. In October 2021, SSA informed us it was (a) working on Memorandums of Understanding with 3 entities to exchange health IT records with over 30 large health IT organizations and (b) adding more staff to develop and implement strategies to expand health IT.

Challenges in expanding the number of health IT records include some partners’ inability to send sensitive medical records, acceptance of SSA’s authorization form to release records to the Agency (Form SSA-827), and medical industry-wide differences in patient-identifying data fields. 

Additionally, SSA has had limited success analyzing medical records because MEGAHIT is limited to analyzing only structured data. MEGAHIT generated data extracts on only 7.3 percent of the 1.6 million health IT records SSA received in FY 2020. The extracts assist SSA disability examiners in making accurate disability determinations. Since 2018, SSA has been developing and testing the Intelligent Medical-Language Analysis GENeration application with new capabilities for reviewing medical records. As of August 2021, SSA was still testing and rolling out this application to its offices. ...

Supreme Court Opinion On Obscure Windfall Offset Issue

      From the syllabus of the Supreme Court's opinion in Babcock v. Kijakazi:

This case concerns retirement benefits due under the Social Security Act for a retired “military technician (dual status)" ... Like all dual-status technicians, Babcock was required to maintain membership in the National Guard. ... Upon retirement, Babcock applied to the Social Security Administration for benefits. The agency granted Babcock benefits but applied a statutory “windfall elimination provision” and reduced the amount of benefits to reflect Babcock’s receipt of civil-service pension payments for his work as a technician. ...

Held: Civil-service pension payments based on employment as a dual-status military technician are not payments based on “service as a member of a uniformed service” ...

     In other words, Babcock loses. Social Security will continue to apply the windfall offset to his Social Security benefits.

     While this seems like an obscure question to me, it probably affects at least hundreds of people, maybe thousands. That's the way it is with Social Security. It's so big that even tiny changes affect significant numbers of people.