AFGE LOCAL 3343

05/13/2026

The Trump administration is celebrating Social Security Commissioner Frank Bisignano’s first year on the job with a triumphant press release, hailing the agency as a “premier service organization.” In truth, there isn’t much to celebrate, despite Bisignano’s boasting

05/13/2026

Sources familiar with these decisions told Federal News Network these facility closures won’t result in any layoffs or staffing reductions.

05/10/2026

Happy Mother’s Day to all the union moms holding it down at work and at home.
Thank you for the strength, compassion, patience, and fight you bring every single day, for your families, your coworkers, and the people we serve. We see you, and we appreciate you. 💙💛

05/09/2026

SSA’s official page is running a magazine profile called “The Man With a Plan.”
Here’s the plan so far: record wait times on the 800-number. Thousands of employees gone. Service degrading in real time.

Great plan.

Frank Bisignano's life has prepared him for his toughest test yet

05/08/2026

Six SSA headquarters executives published an op-ed this week celebrating one year of Frank Bisignano as Commissioner.

They say the agency is working better and faster than ever.

We represent those employees. We are those employees.

The op-ed touts impressive numbers. Shorter wait times. Faster processing. Better outcomes. We’ve challenged these numbers before. They didn’t hold up. We have no reason to trust them now.

What the op-ed doesn’t mention is the workforce producing those results — a workforce that has absorbed buyouts, attrition, and years of chronic understaffing.
Metrics can improve on paper while the people behind them are stretched past the breaking point. That’s not transformation. That’s cost-shifting onto the front line.

The executives who signed this piece don’t sit on hold. They don’t explain to a retiree why their claim is delayed. They don’t absorb the workload when a colleague takes a buyout and the position goes unfilled.

The dedicated employees they praised in the last paragraph didn’t write this. Their bosses did.

Now the comments are filling up with people claiming to be SSA employees saying everything is great. Some of us have looked. They aren’t showing up in SSA systems as current employees.

When the narrative needs astroturf to hold up, that tells you something about the narrative.

Social Security’s workforce is its infrastructure. You can’t celebrate the output while hollowing out the people producing it.

Guest commentary: Social Security is working better and faster than ever, career executives at the agency write.

05/07/2026

Walk-ins: banned, then allowed again.

Overpayment clawbacks: strict, then reversed.

Field office closures: announced, then walked back.

Phone policy: changed repeatedly.

No plan. No resources. No accountability.

75 million people are depending on this agency.

Under new leadership, the agency has reduced the role of field offices across the country and centralized its operations, making it harder for millions of Americans to get help with their benefits.

05/06/2026

As the economy tightens, SSA employees are driving to an office to answer a phone they answered from home for years.

We weren’t working five days a week from home. We were working two days a week from home.

Management took that away.

Nobody has explained why.

Taking away a two-day rotation during an economic crunch isn’t management. It’s just cruelty.

Commissioner Bisignano says he supports his people. Employees want to see it. Restore the rotation. It worked before. It will work again.

Real support beats salty snacks.









Disclaimer: No new pretzel deliveries have been confirmed at this time.

05/05/2026

On this day, 4 May 1886, the Haymarket incident took place when a bomb was thrown while police dispersed a protest against police brutality in Chicago.
The previous day, police opened fire on strikers at the nearby McCormick factory, killing four. It was part of a nationwide dispute which began on May 1 demanding an eight-hour working day.
Anarchists in Chicago, who were very numerous and influential, put out an appeal for workers to take up arms, and they and many union groups called on workers to attend a rally the following day in Haymarket Square.
Around 1200 people attended what was actually quite a subdued rally. By the end, it had started to rain, and there were only around 300 people left. As the final speaker was concluding their speech, 180 police marched in and ordered the crowd to disperse. A dynamite bomb was thrown through the air and exploded, killing one police officer and injuring others.
The police then started shooting wildly into the crowd, and each other. By the time the smoke cleared, at least seven police and four workers were dead. No one knows who threw the bomb, and police did admit to shooting their own colleagues. It is possible that some armed workers did shoot at police, but there is no concrete evidence of this.
The establishment was incensed, with the New York Times claiming that "All the evidence goes to show that it was concerted, deliberately planned, and cooly executed murder" of police by anarchists.
The incident was used to crack down on the strike, and anarchism, and ultimately, eight anarchists were charged and convicted of murder, despite the fact that many of them were nowhere near the meeting when it occurred, and there was no evidence linking any of them to the bomb. Four of them were executed, but all were later pardoned.
Learn more about the Haymarket affair, and the May Day holiday which commemorates it, in episode 85 of our podcast, available for our patreon supporters: https://www.patreon.com/posts/e85-may-day-with-103374699
Pic: An inaccurate illustration of the incident. In reality the speaker had finished speaking when the bomb was thrown. Harper’s Weekly

05/04/2026

Happy Public Service Recognition Week to every SSA employee showing up anyway.

You came back after telework was stripped. You absorbed the walk-ins when AFS ended with no warning and no staff to handle it. You answered the phones when the 800-number was drowning. You worked the cases. You helped the people. You kept the doors open.

Not because management made it easy. They didn’t.

Not because Congress gave the agency what it needs. They haven’t.

You showed up because the people walking through those doors needed you to. Retirees. Disabled workers. Survivors. People who have nowhere else to go.

That’s the job. You know it. You do it anyway.

Someday Congress might fund this agency like it actually matters. Someday SSA might be staffed to meet the demand the public puts on it. Someday the people running this place might make decisions that reflect how much they claim to value you.

Today isn’t that day.

But you’ll be there when it is.

Thank you. Genuinely

05/04/2026

SSA sent employees a Public Service Recognition Week emails.

Praised their resilience. Thanked them for their dedication. Said they were proud.

Two problems.

One: SSA is currently appealing an arbitration ruling that ordered telework restoration. An arbitrator found they violated the National Agreement. SSA’s response was to fight it.

Two: Gas prices are breaking people. Employees who used to telework are now commuting five days a week, watching their paychecks evaporate at the pump, cutting corners at home to make it work.

If you want to recognize your workforce, here’s what that looks like:

Drop the appeal. Restore telework. Let your employees keep more of what they earn.

An email costs nothing. That’s exactly what it’s worth.

Actions are cheap talk’s only cure. SSA hasn’t found that cure yet.

05/01/2026

SSA holds some of the most sensitive personal data in the federal government. Social Security numbers. Medical records. Financial information on hundreds of millions of Americans.

Newly obtained records show that in March 2025, a DOGE employee at SSA signed a formal agreement with an outside political advocacy group. The group’s stated goal was to use that data to challenge election results in specific states.

SSA’s own review found the agreement bypassed internal safeguards and was not approved through normal procedures. The employees involved were referred for potential Hatch Act violations.

A federal appeals court described the conduct as “alarming.” A federal judge has now ordered discovery. The full picture is still coming out.

SSA workers take their responsibility to protect your data seriously. The American public deserves to know whether that trust was violated.

The documents provide the clearest evidence to date that Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) personnel engaged with an outside political group seeking to analyze voter rolls in an effort to challenge election results.