Workers protest budget cuts

MATT HUGHES

mhughes@timesleader.com

PLAINS TWP. – Social Security Administration employees voiced their opposition to federal cuts to the administration’s budget Wednesday outside the SSA Data Operations Center.

Union workers turn out on Wednesday to participate in an informational picket at the entrance to the Social Security Administration facility in Plains Township. The event was held to educate the public about the impact that the 2011 federal budget will have on the administration. (PETE G. WILCOX/THE TIMES LEADER)

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Ringing chants of “Cut the waste, not the worker” and “Working families under attack; what are we going to do? Fight back,” picketers sought to bring attention to the month of furloughs they say will result from the $1.7 billion reduction in the SSA’s operating budget through the end of fiscal year 2011 proposed by Congress.

Ringing chants of “Cut the waste, not the worker” and “Working families under attack; what are we going to do? Fight back,” picketers sought to bring attention to the month of furloughs they say will result from the $1.7 billion reduction in the SSA’s operating budget through the end of fiscal year 2011 proposed by Congress.

“The point that we’re trying to make is that we want to work,” said John Walton, vice president of SSA workers union, which is the American Federation of Government Employees. “We want to continue to serve the public.”

About a dozen picketers met on Baltimore Drive behind the SSA Center shortly before noon. Walton said union members did not take time off to protest, but attended on lunch breaks. About half of the center’s 1,500 employees are union members, union officials said.

Union president Susan Kromer said a furlough would hurt Social Security recipients by creating a processing backlog.

“We’ve had a problem with backlogs already, and this is not going to make anything better,” Kromer said. “It would just be a longer wait, and people are sick of waiting already.”

“This is an intake center,” added NEPA Area Labor Federation coordinator Roxanne Pauline, who attended the protest. “If people that are filing can’t get through, it really becomes a problem for the community as a whole.”

Christina Erling, communications specialist for the American Federation of Government Employees, said Monday what the shutdown of SSA offices for a month would mean:

• 400,000 people would not have their retirement, survivors, and Medicare applications processed this year, resulting in a large backlog of unprocessed retirement and survivor claims for the first time in SSA history.

• 290,000 people would not have their initial disability benefit applications processed, which means disabled workers, who already wait months for their applications to be processed, will wait an average of 30 days longer.

• 70,000 fewer people will get a disability appeals hearing this year, which means workers waiting to present an appeal to a judge, who already wait more than a year, will wait longer.

• 32,000 fewer continuing disability reviews, which means wasting millions of dollars on improper payments now.

Union officials also called the budget cuts an “assault on working families,” saying the SSA is already operating under a partial hiring freeze and cuts could result in as many as 3,500 lost jobs. Kromer said SSA employees are “living paycheck to paycheck.”

The picket in Plains Township was one of about 100 planned to take place across the country Wednesday, including five in Pennsylvania. Members of at least five other local unions also turned out in a show of solidarity.

Walton also linked the protest to other labor protests nationally, including the continued battle of Wisconsin teachers with their state government.

“We just want people to realize that those state and government workers in Wisconsin are not alone,” he said. “We feel their pain indirectly. Even though we’re not directly affected by it, we stand in solidarity with their cause.”