Democratic senators are pressing Frank Bisignano, Social Security's commissioner, to answer questions by March 27 about the ongoing staff reassignments at the agency — including providing reassigned employees with only three hours of training before starting on the SSA helpline.
In a letter Sunday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., along with Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., told Bisignano that SSA claimed that the helpline employees would receive at least eight hours of training and expressed concern that the employees are also fielding suicide calls.
"Your reassigned employees are being moved with barely any training, forcing them to go from more technical positions to customer-facing roles with only days' notice," the senators wrote.
"Employees familiar with handling the phone line say that eight hours of training is 'insufficient due to the complexity of issues that can arise on a call,'" the senators wrote.
"The impacts of this lack of training are already becoming apparent — with literal life and death consequences," the senators continued. "Newly reassigned employees have reported that they are receiving alarming guidance on handling callers expressing suicidal thoughts, including reminding callers 'that suicide is only one option.'"
The senators, members of the Social Security War Room, also want answers about customer service issues, stating that SSA's "ongoing customer service crisis reaching new extremes."
"(Staff) reassignments are band-aid solutions to patch over ongoing service problems that have plagued the agency under your leadership," the senators wrote, highlighting ongoing staffing shortages and field office closures.
Staff cuts "have left the agency with an average of only one field office representative per nearly 4,000 beneficiaries — a ratio that is 12% higher than it was before the cuts," they said.
"With over 100,000 people visiting their local SSA office every day, these staffing reductions translate to declining customer service," they wrote.
Citing a recent survey of SSA employees, the senators state that "nearly two-thirds reported that 'service quality had declined in the past 12 months' and 70% reported 'service speed had declined.'"
"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 a costly, wasteful process that only adds to the customer service chaos," the senators wrote.
"Despite SSA's claims that shifting employees ensures the agency operates at 'peak efficiency,' these reassignments will do the opposite," the senators continued. "As one reassigned employee said, 'we [are] being forced away from the backlog of appeals and cases and forced onto the phones to take calls from people wondering what the status of their claim is and where their back benefits are. ... We are the workers who process the claims they are waiting for.'"
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