Elon Musk has descended upon Social Security with the same careless, ruthless abandon he has brought to every other Federal Agency. An anonymous whistleblower stated the following actions have been taken against the Agency:
1.Probationary attorney-level decision writers who are responsible for assisting Administrative Law Judges were terminated and at a time when the agency has massive backlogs in cases at the Hearing level.
2. The new acting commissioner gloated about firing 14 employees as an "accomplishment" in his commissioner broadcast to the agency.
3. The entire office of Transformation, and its 60+ employees were dissolved. Their purpose was to promote agency-wide efficiencies and faster processing times through oversight over SSA systems and use of information technology.
4. The entire Office of Civil Rights and Equal Opportunity and its 190 employees were dissolved, including the Commissioner and Deputy Commissioner of Civil Rights. OCREO conducts statutorily mandated requirements for employees and members of the public including the reasonable accommodation request process, the public facing discrimination complaint process, and the EEOC employment discrimination complaint process. The National RA Coordinator whose position was court ordered was also terminated.
5. Component heads and executives were told to draft plans to slash Social Security Administration (SSA) by 50% and to reduce the total SSA workforce by seven to eight thousand.
6.SSA staff were sent an email threatening massive reorganization of SSA followed with significant workforce reduction. The email pressured seasoned employees, even front-line employees, with monetary incentives to resign or take early retirement and threatened to fire employees for cause should they not retire or resign.
7. Executive staff responsible for overseeing regional field office operations were terminated. One region had all but 3 out of 72 staff members terminated and it is very likely that the other ten regions had similar terminations. The regional executive offices oversee hundreds of field offices.
8. The Acting Commissioner sent out a memo to SSA staff indicating significant restructuring of the agency due to a "bloated workforce and organizational structure", even though staffing at SSA is the lowest it has been in 50 years. The reorganization includes taking the ten regions that SSA serves and consolidating into four regions; and combining multiple independent components together in an effort to "downsize"
or "streamline." This could potentially lead to massive closures in field offices, a reduction in services, and a significant number of terminations of agency employees.
9. Terminations are happening swiftly and often late in the day to avoid bringing attention to any media or congressional attention to their actions.
10.The trauma they are creating for SSA staff is unreal. According to the whistleblower at least three terminated SSA employees have committed suicide, one which the whistleblower personally knew.
The Social Security Administration issued a Press Release on the Re-organization that claims a fifty percent workforce reduction is not accurate. The press release which you can read HERE states that the SSA intends to reduce the workforce from 57,000 to 50,000 employees, a reduction of 7,000 jobs.
