The public pays Social Security Claims Representatives $60000 a year to open mail, file mail, associate mail, write on folders, and answer phones. That sounds great for employees, except that the stuff they are paid to do just keeps piling up. Medical reviews, reviews of disabled people who returned to work, and overpayment collection actions are piled in cardboard boxes, because Social Security is rushing to pay new claims and reinstatements without clerks.
Social Security is a poor steward of public money. One reason for this is that Social Security makes poor personnel choices with its salary budget. There are layers of management in local offices and layers of offices between local offices and Regional Commissioners. Some examples of bad personnel practices are Management Support Specialists, Vision 2010, and Technical Experts.
Social Security created the position Management Support Specialist as a replacement for the Operations Supervisor so it could lie to Congress and say that supervisory ranks dropped. Management Support Specialists are like Operations Supervisor except that Management Support Specialists manage work loads rather than people. Management Support Specialists are management without being supervisors, but they wear the stripes of their boss.
As President Clinton left, Social Security threw together Vision 2010 to describe what Social Security would look like in 2010. Look at any Social Security Office and picture 60% of the staff gone. That is what Social Security will look like in 2010. All were all hired when Jimmy Carter got elected, all approach age 55, and all count days until retirement, because Social Security promises immediate service that means when people call to say they quit work or lost their Workers Compensation, employees concentrate on paying them immediately. It has become the right of everybody to go to the head of the line. Meanwhile, millions of disabled people with personality disorders, the biggest diagnosis paid by Social Security, go back to work. No one counts their work months, because everybody is answering phones. By the time Social Security terminates people, they are overpaid thousands. Advocacy groups, paid grants by Social Security, call Social Security to argue that the person is so marginal that wages are subsidized! Social Security Managers, seat cushions that retain the impression of the last ass to sit on them, direct that these subsidies be accepted as alledged. The person files for a waiver of paying back any remaining overpayment: he didn’t understand the reporting, the money kept coming, Social Security waited too long to tell him. Then an Administrative Law Judge wearing a transparent belt buckle, so he won’t bump into walls, waives the overpayment. Social Security is so determined to be Sociable Security that it pours all of its resources into new claims and skips being a steward of the public trust. Social Security is not stopping checks when disabled people go to work, and almost all do, it forfeits the resulting overpayments, it fails to learn about awarded workers compensation that should be offset from Social Security benefits, and it expects nobody to be responsible for their own lives.
Social Security decided that Social Security Claims Representatives (CR) need someone to show them how to do their complicated work. It created the position Technical Expert (TE) by promoting two Claims Representatives (Super CR) in each office from GS-11 to GS-12, an $11000 pay raise. They only have to work this job three years, and their pension will be exactly the same as if they had worked this job for 30 years. The CR job description had the word complex added to each duty to become the TE job description. Technical Experts are supposed to work complex overpayments, complex continuing disability reviews, complex expedited benefit reinstatements – things Claims Representatives have been doing for the past 25 years of their careers.
After Social Security created a national position description for Technical Experts, it was left to local managers to decide what their individual Technical Experts would actually do.
Some Technical Experts have an expertise at gutting a job description. They will read publication changes to staff, preview training videotapes first to see if the rest would benefit, and mentor new employees (what’s that?).
Some Technical Experts have scant experience in Disability (having always done Retirement claims), cannot use Microsoft Word, have never done any kind of overpayment action, and have no experience in the kinds of things that happen after entitlement begins.
Some Technical Experts have spent most of their time reminding their Manager and the staff that Claims Representatives didn’t lose any duties, and that being expert at something doesn’t mean having to actually do it. If anyone asks them a question, they go to someone with experience in that area and relay the response. Meanwhile their workload is 25% smaller, so they can contemplate.
I’m sure they’re laughing at their Manager while they go to the bank to deposit their $11000 pay raise.
A typical Social Security Office has this 1 Manager, 1 Assistant Manager, 1 Operations Supervisor, 1 Management Support Specialist, 1 Systems Coordinator, 2 Technical Experts, 9 Claims Representatives, 6 Service Representatives, and no clerks. This is 5 people GS-12 and higher to manage and mentor 15 production people who have no clerical support. The 5 manager/mentors spend much of their time printing computer lists of pending claims and asking the 15 production people for status, because between the Regional Commissioner Office and the Local Office, there is an Area Director Office with an Area Director, an Area Administrative Assistant and 2 Management Support Specialists. Their role is to print computer lists of pending claims and ask local Managers for status.
If all these people who ask for status were actually impacting the status, there would be no need for people to ask for the status. The status would be fine. Claims Representatives do not need anybody to do complex work. They know how to do it. What they do need is somebody to open the mail and answer the phone.
If Social Security got rid of the Area Directors and Management Support Specialists, demoted the Technical Experts, and hired a bunch of clerks; Claims Representatives and Service Representatives could clear claims and track all the people who are now getting overpaid. They could prevent overpayments, instead of listening to people whine about them until an Administrative Law Judge throws away public money by waiving collection.
This article was posted on September 26, 2005
