When Will Government Offices Open Again
Jeff Greenberg/Getty Images
After two years of most of the bureau's offices being closed to the public—except past appointment—due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Social Security Assistants reopened its traditional worksites last week.
But labor groups, who in January reached an agreement with the agency to negotiate farther on the component level nigh how reentry would occur, reported that procedure was a mixed purse, with employees at teleservice centers and the agency's around 1,200 field offices getting the short cease of the stick.
Rich Couture, president of the American Federation of Government Employees Quango 215, which represents employees in the Role of Hearing Operations, and principal negotiator for the union on reentry, said that although some offices, like his own, were successful in reaching agreement alee of offices reopening last calendar week, the majority were not.
"I tin can say that generally, with few exceptions, the component council meetings did non accomplish their purpose," he said. "There were whole issues that were non considered appropriate for discussion past the agency. It was primarily telework, merely proposals to accost process reform, workload management and those types of proposals were given a full hearing, much less discussed."
Unlike most other components, who were unable to secure expanded telework schedules compared to those originally proposed by the agency, employees at the Office of Hearing Operations were able to increase their allowed telework from three days per week to four, while some workers with no direct interaction with the public secured full-time telework.
"The level of appointment we had betwixt Council 215 and OHO was non shared across the board," Couture said. "From my perspective, information technology was an opportunity for cooperation that was squandered by the rest of the agency."
Angela Digeronimo, president of AFGE Local 2505, which represents employees in Social Security field offices and its teleservice centers, said well-nigh all of her matrimony's proposals, ranging from increased telework, setting up cohorts that would bike into the office for a week while others work remotely—to mitigate spread of COVID-19—and preserving some office hours equally by appointment only, were all flatly rejected by management. Dissimilar Office of Hearing Operations staff who have no interaction with the public, teleservice eye employees, whose work is similarly completely portable, must even so come in one day per calendar week.
"These were all things we wanted to discuss and explore further, and everything that we put on the table they were not willing to practise," Digeronimo said. "The bureau is proverb, 'We're critically understaffed,' and the agency is challenge that information technology's because of the appropriations not existence sufficient, so staffing will remain flat and nosotros have been for four years. But it's more than than that: it's the fact that they are not willing to reimagine how we practice business with the public and reinvent services and then they're better for the public and likewise the work-life flexibilities for employees, and then nosotros're not attracting or retaining people."
Credit: VW Pics/Getty Images
In a statement, Social Security Administration spokeswoman Nicole Tiggemann said the agency will keep to evaluate service needs at field offices over the next several months, and could expand workplace flexibilities as demand slows.
"We recognize the need to restore walk-in service while prioritizing wellness and safe, especially to attain people who have experienced difficulties reaching us through other channels," she said. "Our field offices must be staffed to support public need for in-person service, including walk-up service. We continue to invest in automation, like centralizing the printing of notices, that could bulldoze downwardly work that requires employees to be onsite. Additionally, our reentry plan provides a six-month evaluation learning menstruum, which includes expanded telework, to inform our future."
Digeronimo said that agency employees learned that offices would reopen on April 7 at the same time information technology was announced to the public: last Monday. She described a rocky start to in-person services, with long lines and retired managers temporarily rehired for "oversupply control," some workers already testing positive for COVID-19, and weather that left some employees feeling threatened or otherwise unsafe.
"We've had claimants actually follow employees to their auto and knock on their window, so they're fearful and at that place'southward anxiety," she said. "Our employees desire to do a good job and nosotros're committed to the public service that we signed on for and 99% of employees took this job because information technology was a calling . . . By doing our work and doing information technology well, nosotros make a difference in these people's lives and we take that very seriously. Only unfortunately, the bureau doesn't take our lives into consideration."
The agency employs contractors to serve as security guards at field offices. But Digeronimo said that the contract stipulates that they are only responsible for what goes on within field offices, leaving employees exposed as they walk to and from their vehicles.
Tiggemann said in a argument that the agency is committed to protecting employees' health and prophylactic.
"We accept armed protective security officers in all of our field offices and have security protocols in place to protect our employees," she said. "In addition, the Federal Protective Service and local law enforcement are available for additional support when needed."
But Digeronimo said she feels similar some of people's frustration with field role employees could have been averted if the agency did a better job protecting them from the insinuation that they haven't been at work for the concluding two years.
"The bureau has a Facebook page, and I've been sort of looking at information technology on a regular basis, and a lot of it is the public saying, 'You need to reopen, you lot've had enough of a holiday,'" she said. "But the bureau hasn't been doing anything to refute that frame of mind. They're letting the public think that the employees have been home not doing annihilation, collecting a paycheck while not working when, in fact, we take been working . . . They did a good thing [keeping offices closed] to keep usa safe [from COVID], but in that location are people who are going to get frustrated and then see an employee and attempt to get an answer from them, sometimes aggressively."
Source: https://www.govexec.com/workforce/2022/04/social-security-offices-reopen-unions-report-mixed-bag/365497/
0 Response to "When Will Government Offices Open Again"
Post a Comment