Senate Democrats push Social Security on employee reassignments to phone line
SSA pushed out over 7,400 employees last year, including 1,387 contact representatives, as the Trump administration sought to reduce the size of the government’s workforce.
Since last summer, the agency has moved over a thousand employees from its field offices to answer its phone line, and last month, Nextgov/FCW reported that the agency was shifting employees from its processing centers, technology office, financial unit and other offices to the phone line, too.
Employees told Nextgov/FCW at the time that it made little sense for those processing benefit claims to answer calls, many of which may be about the status of those very claims.
Several said that they only got hours of training. Employees moved to the phone line were told during that training on their new roles to tell callers expressing suicidal thoughts that suicide is “one option,” Government Executive reported last month, a practice experts say doesn’t follow best practices.
The senators want an array of details about the reassignments, including how many employees have been moved and from what posts, the training they received, why the agency moved them, how the agency’s reassignments have impacted its functioning and any hiring SSA is doing. It recently had open jobs listed for contact center representatives.
The letter’s signatories include Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., Angela Alsobrooks, D-Md., Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., Ben Ray Lujan, D-N.M., Patty Murray, D-Wash., Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Ron Wyden, D-Ore.
“This entire process of firing and pushing out call service staff, re-assigning other employees to serve as call center staff, and now rehiring a whole new set of inexperienced call service staff, is the opposite of government efficiency – it is a costly, wasteful process that only adds to the customer service chaos,” they write.
“Your forced staff reassignments are harming Social Security beneficiaries, endangering the accuracy of claims, and wasting taxpayer dollars,” the letter continues. “When SSA pulls employees away from already understaffed field offices or from processing backlogs in claims, customer service and the timely delivery of benefits suffer.”
An SSA spokesperson told Nextgov/FCW that “with our focus on technology and process engineering, we have realized significant operational efficiencies throughout the agency, allowing us to deploy additional staff to assist customers on the National 800 Number.”
“This strategic deployment furthers our efforts to deliver the world-class customer service the American people deserve. Employees deployed to assist customers on the National 800 Number receive appropriate training for the specific types of calls they handle, along with ongoing technical support,” they said.
The reassignments are the latest in a string of changes at the agency since President Donald Trump took office last year. SSA leadership has embarked on reorganizing how the agency operates, pushed Americans to interact with SSA online and via the phone instead of in person, and made rapid policy changes or reversals.
SSA has also been at the center of the news for whistleblower allegations that representatives from the Department of Government Efficiency mishandled sensitive data at the agency. SSA made two Hatch Act violation referrals last late last year after a Department of Government Efficiency employee signed an agreement to share SSA data with a political advocacy group.
The Democrats sending the letter allege that previous SSA responses to other oversight letters didn’t include key details on earlier reassignments at SSA, like how many employees were shifted to new roles. The SSA spokesperson said that “SSA works diligently to provide regular updates to Congressional committees of jurisdiction and offer timely responses to Members of Congress.”
The agency hasn’t responded at all to a December letter following up on Nextgov/FCW reporting that the agency wanted to reduce field office visits by 15 million, the senators say.
Warren and the head of SSA, Frank Bisignano, have also gone back and forth over the agency’s call wait times since SSA changed the metrics it reports publicly last year.
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