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     From Government Executive : The Social Security Administration on Monday informed employees of its various subcomponents that it will move forward with new cuts to telework policies, a move quickly decried by union officials who said they were left out of the notification process. ... Rich Couture, who serves both as a spokesman for the American Federation of Government Employees� general committee representing Social Security employees and president of AFGE Council 215, which represents workers at the agency�s hearings and appeals offices, said management similarly rejected his own efforts to learn about the changes, and that he spent much of his afternoon in meetings and working with fellow union representatives to cobble together a list of the reforms across the agency. �I�ve got to tell you, the depth of disrespect and disregard for AFGE with the rollout of this announcement, where the press found out before the union and th...

     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 employee...

     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. Click on image to view full size

     From Government Executive : A group of 44 Democratic senators on Monday urged Social Security Administration Commissioner Andrew Saul to reverse his decision to cancel telework for nearly 12,000 employees. ... In a letter Monday , 44 Senate Democrats, led by Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., urged Saul to �reconsider� the decision to end the telework program. �We understand that SSA�s new contract with the American Federation of Government Employees has just come into effect, and that this contract conferred some degree of discretion to SSA management to set new rules for teleworking,� the lawmakers wrote. �We do not believe, however, that this justifies management�s unilateral decision to rescind telework entirely for the 12,000 affected employees . . . We are concerned that SSA is not providing sufficient time for workers to alter their arrangements to account for this policy change.� The senators wrote that while improving customer service for Social Security ...

     From a press release : Today, House Ways and Means Social Security Subcommittee Chairman John B. Larson (CT-01) , House Appropriations Labor, Health, Human Services, and Education Subcommittee Chairwoman Rosa DeLauro (CT-03) , House Ways and Means Worker and Family Support Subcommittee Chairman Danny K. Davis (IL-07) , and House Ways and Means Oversight Subcommittee Chairman John Lewis (GA-05) sent a letter to Andrew Saul, Commissioner of the Social Security Administration (SSA), to request transparency and more information after SSA abruptly ended a pilot telework program. �SSA�s Operations division initiated the Telework Pilot in 2013 and has expanded the pilot significantly over the years. Today, roughly one-quarter of SSA Operations staff or 12,000 employees telework between one and two days per week�. While the SSA Operations Telework Pilot has existed for nearly six years, SSA apparently did not adequately evaluate the pilot and has not articulate...

     I received a broadcast e-mail this morning saying that Social Security offices will be closed on the Friday after Thanksgiving. I assume that Social Security employees have not been given the day off however. That happened in the past when Michael Astrue was Commissioner.

     Indy Week has an article giving a lot of fascinating background on the case of Andrew McGuffin, a Social Security attorney-advisor who was fired less than a year after being hired. I had posted earlier about the decision of the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in McGuffin's case.      It's clear from the records that McGuffin was fired so quickly because he is a veteran. After only a year, it's much harder to fire a vet. The same protections only kick in after two years for non-veterans. The problem for Social Security was that McGuffin demonstrated low productivity but there were no productivity standards for the first year of employment for attorney-advisors. Those kicked in only after the first year after which it would have been harder to fire McGuffin because he is a vet. They fired him anyway. McGuffin sued and eventually won.      By the way, while it has nothing to do with this case, I can't help thinking of Alfred Hitchc...

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     From Bloomberg Law : A former attorney adviser with the Social Security Administration convinced the Federal Circuit Nov. 7 that his veteran status was a substantially motivating factor in the agency�s 2011 decision to fire him. As a qualifying veteran hired by a government agency, Clarence McGuffin was entitled to a shorter probationary period than other non-veteran new hires before the full suite of Civil Service Reform Act rights vested. Those rights include the right to appeal adverse employment actions to the Merit Systems Protection Board....  �We want to terminate him so that he does not acquire MSPB rights,� read one intra-agency email quoted in the opinion. Another email stated that McGuffin was a �vet� who �has to be terminated in his first year.� ... McGuffin was let go from his attorney adviser position in SSA�s Office of Disability Adjudication and Review in part because he allegedly wasn�t producing his �fair share� of work, a mo...