Social Security Administration Letting Tax Dollars Go Up In Smoke

By PPRN News Staff

We sometime hear of these stories of a single public employee, usually a Public Works employee who spends most sunny afternoons asleep in the city truck while on city time. The employee is fired and required to pay back his ill-gotten wages. Shame and humiliation await him at his next job, if he can find one.

The Wilkes-Barre Data Operations Center (WBDOC) is the Social Security Administration’s power house of form processing and telephone service. It employs approximately 1,200 men and women from the area. Without it, beneficiaries would rarely receive benefits in a timely fashion and wait times on the telephones would exceed hours long. It is led by Operations Director Carol Truskowski, and the Social Security Administration Commissioner is Michael J. Astrue.

The WBDOC is located within Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, where more than 30 government officials[1] have either been convicted of, or lost their jobs due to corruption. But imagine the outrage that the American People will feel when they learn that the WBDOC, the sole processing facility of many reports not just for the nation, but also for beneficiaries around the world, has a culture of abuse and fraud that makes a sleepy city employee seem like a wisp of smoke.

The smoke that comes from the WBDOC, originates at the end of a cigarette. While the national average for smokers is 19.8%, Pennsylvania holds at 21%[2] of the population smoking. And while a private sector business would limit a smoker taking a smoke break to previously scheduled breaks and lunches, the WBDOC allows for unscheduled smoke breaks, some as long as 25-30 minutes.

It is hard to believe that a non-smoker would begrudge a smoker a quick, 5 minute break during a busy workload, but according to my one source, Pat, and verified through other sources that work in the building, the smokers will take as many as five extra breaks just to smoke while others are processing forms, resolving issues with scanned images, or answering the phones and thus abusing the rest break system.

This abandonment of the non-smokers to carry the load of absent smokers breeds gross resentment, and causes undue stress on the non-smoker to complete a workload in a timely fashion. There is no room for error and missing a deadline is inexcusable. The non-smoker is burdened with an extra 10% of the work over what a smoker performs, and that does not include the time loss due to associated health conditions associated with smoking. A study[3] from Europe showed as much as 7 to 10 extra sick days are taken by smokers over non-smokers.

Adding insult to injury, many of those that abuse the system frequently receive the Recognition of Contribution (ROC) award, where they can receive a bonus of up to 10% of their base pay, and the usual award amount is approximately $400-700. Many non-smokers are agitated by this insult, for many of the non-smokers do more than their fair share of work  and feel slighted by being denied any recognition for their dedication.

Just how is the system being abused? Look at the amount of time wasted while puffing on a cancer stick:

Assuming the following givens:

• Average smoke break: 15 minutes
• Average number of unscheduled breaks: 3
• Average number of smokers: (21% of 1,200 but only 1/3 abuse the breaks): 84
• Shift differential is not accounted for and the average hourly wage of all smokers (GS-6 step 8): $21.96[4]

Carried to 20 minutes a break and the daily cost rises to $1844, which is equal the sum if of these smokers take 2 extra breaks for 15 minutes.

These estimates are for only one day, and are estimates only, and for only one building within the jurisdiction of the Social Security Administration. The total amount for a year in wasted taxpayer’s dollars: $ 302,877 (accounting for Federal Holidays and a 4 week vacation). The extra 5 minutes a break or two additional 15 minute breaks brings an estimated waste of $403,976, again accounting for Federal Holidays and a 4 week vacation.

Is this really a fair assessment? Below is a transcript of a conversation that Pat and I had recently:

PPRN: Pat, is the five extra breaks really a fair number? Can you verify the count?

Pat: It is fair. I used to work days and now I work nights. The night shift starts at 4:30 pm and there is a 2 ½ hour flex band, so there are people that can start work at 7:00 pm and go until 3:30 am. The smokers will take breaks at 5:30 pm, 6:30 pm, take the scheduled break at 7:00-7:15, and then a smoke break at 8. Lunch is at 8:30 pm to 9:00 pm, and they take a smoke break at 10:00 pm, the regular break is at 11:00-11:15, and then they take a break at midnight. I have to leave at 1:00 which is the regular quitting time. Others have told me that some have smoke breaks of over 30 minutes because they work until 3:00 am.

Rarely, there is overtime during the week, but I have my mom to take care of so I don’t do overtime then. When they have it (overtime) on the weekend I try to do it once a month and it’s just as bad. The overtime runs from 6:00 am to 6:00 pm and most people are scheduled for about 6 hours, but they hardly work 5. And to verify, we have cameras at all the doors the smokers use. You can see them smoking but nothing happens to them. Even Assistant Branch Managers who are above the Line Supervisors abuse breaks. You see them going out it groups of 8 or so. They come back 20-25 minutes or so later and sometimes they are all noisy and carrying on. If we’re on the phone we have to apologize to the customer on the other end. It’s not fair.

And there are a lot of ways of verifying what I’m telling you. When we leave our desks we have to lock the computers and make our phones “not ready”. They keep track of all that. And when you come back into the building you have to run your ID by a scanner and that is tracked, and there are cameras all around the building and I’m sure they see people taking breaks, and that has to be recorded. So if a group of people go out, the lock their computers and their phones and that is recorded, and when they come back into the building their card is recorded and then when they unlock the computer that is recorded. Just look at the records. It’s all there!

PPRN: That does come out to 5 extra breaks on top of the three legal breaks, and a solid paper trail. Why doesn’t the management tell people to get back to work?

Pat: Because they are out there too for the 20-25 minutes! It’s no use talking to anyone, that’s why I had to tell someone about it. I went to the IG’s (Inspector General) office, but nothing happened. You can’t tell someone you can’t take a long break they just stare at you and tell you to mind your own business.

I’m telling you this, I’m scared. If anyone finds out who I am, I really think they’ll fire me, or hurt me. I’ll never see a promotion and I’ll never get the days I want for vacation. The only way you can get promoted in this place is if you’re friends with the people that make the decisions. The other non-smokers are just pissed off on how they get treated but no one says anything because they don’t want to get singled out. You said a word earlier, a pariah. If that means what I think it means, yeah. That’s what I’ll be.

PPRN: Is it really that bad for them to take long breaks?

Pat: Hell yes! Think about it for a minute. A fifteen minute break means I have to process a bunch of clerical forms while they’re gone, and I’ll be on my second box when they get back, or by the time all the clerical is done, I’ve done three boxes and they did maybe 2. But it’s worse than that. Our Representative Payee reporting forms are stacked up along a wall and the racks are what, 5 feet long and 4 shelves a rack, and there are three boxes stacked on top of each other along that 6 foot shelf, and each shelf is 6 boxes wide, and there are at least 8 racks that are from months ago <25,000 forms a rack, 200,000 forms estimated>.

The forms came here, got opened up and put in a box with 350 or so other forms and they are waiting MONTHS just to be looked at. But that’s not all either! Once the form is looked at it gets scanned. And then we look at the scanned image to see if there is any problems that the scanner found and we work to complete them. Right now we are working on exceptions on forms that were scanned in late July 2011. That’s 9 months stuck in the computer before someone can work the exceptions. That’s horrible! It was hardly like this when I started ____ years ago. Hardly. Maybe a month or so stuck in the computer but not 9 months.  <Number of years hidden to protect privacy>

PPRN: Why the backlog? Is it manpower or something else?

Pat: We are a bunch of old people that they call dinosaurs and a lot of us are retiring just a quick as we can. They (SSA) put a hiring freeze on but the management did something really stupid, they wanted everybody cross trained on different workloads. It’s really stupid. I can do a _____ or a ______ form in my sleep, but then they gave us something new <Form types hidden to protect privacy>. We can’t do a good job if we have to learn a new job. That makes a backlog and people get hurt by it.  Our director knows about the Representative Payee backlog because she has to walk by the racks on her way to the ladies room

PPRN: Are you looking for other work?

Pat: I’d love to retire but I can’t afford it right now. I make more than what you told me was the average pay, but I still can’t save enough. My rent goes up every year and food and gas are killing me. I don’t know what to do.

Very rarely have I heard someone’s heart breaking as Pat ended that last sentence.

But now we come to the real crux of the matter.

Fraud.

It is a crime to file fraudulent time sheets if you work for the Government. Herman Ransom falsified his time sheets in order to play tennis and gamble during work hours. He was supposed to be working as a manager for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. His conviction was affirmed by The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals and found that Ransom had sufficient intent and knowledge of his crimes and rejected his argument on the vagueness of the wire-fraud statute. A jury convicted him of 10 counts of wire fraud and 10 counts of theft of public funds. He was sentenced to one year and one day in jail and two years of supervised release after jail.[5]

While Ransom’s fraud went on for 6 years and for just under 600 hours, the average time loss the WBDOC suffers from one smoker in the same time period is 1,080 hours and that is assuming the aforementioned given amounts of 3 breaks at 15 minutes long, 5 days a week for 48 weeks (4 weeks of vacation time).

Their daily time is recorded on paper daily sheets as well as an electronic form known as the e3024. The employees record how much time they expend on the various workloads and management uses that data to estimate resource needs, justify budgets, determine costs of workloads and functions, and finally, assess productivity – and both are official documents with penalties for fraudulent entries.

At the end of a two week pay cycle, 7.5 hours are spent by a smoker away from the workplace. This means that though they are paid from January 1, 2012 until December 31, 2012, they only at their desk until November 29, 2012, or 4.8 weeks lost due to excessive breaks. And this is only assuming they take 3 extra breaks, and not the 5 extra breaks observed by Pat and many others. The extra breaks, if consistent, means nearly 7 weeks of lost time, or they work at their desk until November 15, 2012 and get paid for the full year.

Fraud never had it so good.

Pat is just one of hundreds of non-smokers who have to carry the workload for unscrupulous workers filing falsified time sheets and abusing a system designed to give workers a needed break. Will she ever see justice?

I’m sorry Pat, but you probably won’t. And neither will the tax payer.

Read more: http://pprnnews.prepperpodcast.com/social-security-administration-letting-tax-dollars-go-up-in-smoke/#ixzz1sbdwtCQv