SSA needs strong leadership

When President-elect Joe Biden took the stage to address the country on Saturday, Nov. 7, Americans across the country took a sigh of relief. Finally, we could all turn off the news every now and then. We could rest assured our leaders would act in the best interest of public health amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

However, it’s unclear if employees at the Social Security Administration can join our peers across the federal government to in the collective sigh of relief. As representatives of 26,000 employees in field offices, workload support unites, and teleservice centers, Council 220 has been on the front lines to protect employees from mismanagement and anti-employee bias.

While the incoming Biden-Harris administration faces the arduous task of remaking the federal government in a manner that will truly serve the public, we are afraid our calls for new leadership at SSA will go unnoticed or overlooked.

That’s why this past week, AFGE Council 220’s Executive Committee unanimously found no confidence in SSA leadership. A survey of a portion of our members also found that 57 percent said they were “dissatisfied” or “very dissatisfied” with the time it took SSA leadership to reinstate telework amid the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, and 84 percent of respondents said they do not believe SSA is setting clear expectations for a safe return to the office.

We released the findings of our survey alongside our peers in the Association of Administrative Law Judges (AALJ), who likewise found no confidence in SSA leadership. It’s clear that we are ready for a new day of leadership at the Social Security Administration.

As the president-elect’s team of advisers begin the transition process, SSA employees believe any candidate for the next commissioner meet a base level of criteria in order to successfully lead our agency.

First, the next commissioner must fundamentally respect the dignity of work: that all labor has value, and all SSA employees are worthy of respect from their peers in management. Biden has often spoken about the dignity of work on the campaign trail, pledging to “ensure that workers are treated with dignity and receive the pay, benefits, and workplace protections they deserve.”

The right to adequate workplace protections is particularly important in the era of COVID-19. Just last April, Social Security employees fought for and won the right to work remotely amid the spread of the novel coronavirus. Once the agency conceded, management spent months ignoring the fact that our employees performed better than ever from the safety of our homes and refused to collaborate with the union on a thoughtful approach to bring people back to the office and maintain the current high production levels of employees.

Leadership priorities

The SSA commissioner oversees an operation of 55,000 employees nationwide. The next commissioner must openly commit to acting in the best interest of public health and guarantee to our employees that they can continue to fulfill the mission of our agency from the safety and security of their homes as long as COVID-19 is spreading rampantly in our country.

Finally, the next commissioner must commit to open and honest dialogue with the union to ensure that our concerns are heard and respected. Furthermore, this commitment must be met throughout all levels of management at SSA.

While it’s important to see these attributes in our next agency commissioner, employees across the federal government face a fundamental barrier to exercising our rights: a Federal Service Impasses Panel stacked with anti-employee partisans and a Federal Labor Relations Authority that has lacked a general counsel for four years.

Unlike our brothers and sisters in the private sector, federal employees do not have the right to strike. We must settle disputes with our agencies through the FSIP, and ultimately the FLRA. For the sake of all federal employees, Biden must appoint a general counsel at the FLRA and replace the political appointees on both FLRA and FSIP with thoughtful, nonpartisan panelists.

The task ahead of the president-elect is formidable: not only will he need to realign the federal government to once again serve the American people, he must rebuild it. We are encouraged by Biden’s commitment to working people and sincerely hope our vision for the next Social Security Administration is heard loud and clear.

Ralph de Juliis is the president of AFGE Council 220, which oversees Social Security employees in telecommunication centers and field offices around the country.