AFGE has released a special video to honor Social Security’s 79th birthday today, and called on the Social Security Administration (SSA) to abandon its Vision 2025 strategic plan to close hundreds of community offices across the U.S.
Many parts of the plan are already in motion, as SSA has cut 11,000 front line, direct service employees since 2011, closed 80 field offices and vowed to cut essential services at the remaining office locations. In the future, the 43 million Americans who visit community offices annually would instead be required to go online.
“We will champion efforts to strengthen Social Security and undo the damage already suffered by opening shuttered field offices, restoring all services, ending long wait times, and hiring all the staff needed to meet the mission,” said AFGE National President J. David Cox, Sr. “We urge the American people to rise up and join us in this fight because every single one of us has too much at stake to do anything less.”
AFGE has joined a coalition of concerned organizations in forming a petition that demands the Social Security Administration, Congress and the White House to strengthen the network. So far, 100,000 people had signed the petition.
