"The only thing that actually works in this agency is the workers": A Letter from a Union President
by Adam Pelletier
Photo Credit: AFGE LOCAL 3343 Facebook
The following letter was sent by the author, Adam Pelletier, President of AFGE Local 3343 in Troy, New York, to management in the Social Security Administration. It has been lightly edited and abridged for publication.
Good afternoon Social Security Administration management officials,
I hope you all had a very enjoyable holiday season and are enjoying the new year so far.
I am overdue on sending you all a proper introduction. It has been a busy and chaotic month, and I apologize for my delinquency. What follows is not anything that I expect any of you to take any action on. It just is what it is.
I am sure most of you are aware, but since 01/01/2020 I have been the Local President of AFGE Local 3343. As a notorious and deceased poet once rapped, “if you don’t know, now you know.”
I feel it is important and necessary for me to take some of my own personal time to explain and articulate the perspective with which I approach my official union duties, attempt to dispel any rumors that may be floating out there about me, explain to you what my expectations of you all are, and lastly explain why I am incredibly disappointed with a lot of what I have been hearing and experiencing lately. What follows is not in any particular order.
In the interest of transparency, you should be aware that I am sending this to all of the bargaining unit employees in all of the field offices as authorized by Article 11, Section 7. According to the Contract, I could do one of these a week.
I approach my union duties the same exact way I approach my agency duties: with passion, diligence, integrity, and transparency. I do not want any of you to fear me. I am nothing to be afraid of, but I do demand that you respect my position, if not my person.
I am not afraid of telling any of you exactly what I think, which I will always articulate in a tactful way. I request that you deal with me with integrity, because if you don’t, it will erode my confidence in you as a management.
It’s hard for some of you to accept, but in a union-management perspective, none of you are my superior or my boss. We are equals, even if there is a clear institutional power imbalance. I would recommend against attempting to exert authority of position over me in a Union capacity. I will not tolerate it.
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The real reason it would bother some of you is because, from a managerial perspective, it is always easier to "resolve an issue" when an employee doesn't know they have rights or isn't aware that they have a union that will fight to not just defend those rights, but to expand those rights.
A worker who isn't aware of their rights is unable to assert or affirm them. I promise you, they are all going to know. This scares some of you because there are some things that have been going on for a long time that are going to change, one way or another. I'm not just talking about the increasingly hostile and overt attacks against the workers (which also includes you) by the Commissioner, I'm also talking about some agency processes and procedures that I am convinced are not being handled or managed properly by the Agency. Stand by, and brace yourselves, for some of those issues in the coming months.
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It is at that time that I would like to congratulate Commissioner Saul because, by virtue of my first Executive Order as the Local President, I have named him as the AFGE Local 3343 Union Organizer of the year.
AFGE Local 3343 has had more members file grievance in the last few months than the Local has filed in decades. Why? It’s not because of me. It’s because of him. Please let him know that I will be mailing a certificate to him within the next few weeks. I hope he sends a one page PDF file of it to all of the workers that is so large it crashes my CPU like the one page one we all got a few weeks ago. Great work Andy! If he is interested, I would be more than willing to have an actual ceremony to present this newly established and highly coveted honor. (Please pass this along to him for me)
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I am not shy about expressing my concerns about the biggest problem facing the public, our members, non-members, and even all of you members of management: the staffing crisis at the agency. I would estimate that somewhere between 80-95% percent of the issues that I have been finding myself involved with (officially, unofficially, formally, or informally) are ultimately borne of the staffing crisis.
The only thing that actually works in this agency is the workers, and we are the things that are being systematically and bureaucratically abused and attacked. The public, in mind should find a way to sue the agency for engaging in bureaucratic manslaughter of thousands and thousands of dead claimants.
Have you tried to use the systems this week? They certainly weren't working and now the employees all over the country are asking the question, "so, umm... now that wednesday PMs have been stolen from us, there's no overtime, and field offices are being flooded with increasing numbers of agitated members of the public walking in or calling in, and everyone is suffering from burnout, when am I going to have time to process any of the agency’s work?" So I pose that same question to you all. The answer is not to demand more work out of fewer and fewer employees. Can we tell them to report their concerns to the internet
We are not machines, so please stop treating us like pieces of equipment. I am, on average over the past few months, speaking to one or two employees per pay period who are either on the verge of tears or actually crying. This is how I spend some of my evenings after work. You know why they are crying or on the verge of a breakdown? Work related stress and unreasonable expectations of management officials that defy mathematics.
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About 6 months ago, I was asked by management to conduct union business somewhere besides my agency workstation because it was allegedly "distracting" to other employees. It wasn't. It is no more distracting than if I were sitting at the same desk taking a telephone claim. I suspect the real reason was because the manager did not want the employees to be exposed to what I do in a union capacity.
That was like six months ago. A few weeks ago, I was in the break room, because it is apparently "distracting" if I am on my phone at my desk talking about union issues, when I was told by the same management official that I couldn't do union stuff in the break room, and that I had to do it at my desk. I calmly and politely explained that I believed that this was incorrect, but that I would comply and complain about it later. So, I went back to my desk, then told the rest of the Local Union Presidents from the NY region (that I happened to be on a conference call with) what had just happened.
About 10-15 minutes later the same manager came back, very apologetically, and explained that there was a misunderstanding about some of the language in the new contract. I explained that I understood that there is a lot of confusion about the new contract, and that I believed a lot of it was because of the contract training they all went to recently. I accepted the apology and considered the issue resolved. I could have, probably should have, and still actually could file a grievance over this act because my rights were violated, but I am not wholly unreasonable and I am confident that it will not happen again.
I have heard from a few different people in a few different offices mention that managers have made statements that imply that I am running around sowing divisions between the employees and management, and that I am creating an "us" and "them" mentality in the field offices. First of all, just about every single one of you has much more in common with me and the rest of the workers than you do with the Commissioner. None of you would actually qualify as the "them" if I were actually forming up sides, which I am not.
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It is kind of comical to hear of managers complaining about not having time to do things they have to do, because that is exactly the basis of almost every grievance that has been filed in the last few weeks or will be filed by the end of the day today.
What I am actually doing is working to unite the workers, to build power that will be used to improve the working conditions of SSA workers. I am not causing chaos. That is the Commissioner you are thinking of. All I am doing is organizing the chaos into power.
I do not believe that this agency has an entire cast of bad-acting management officials drooling over the prospects of abusing the only things that actually always works 100% of the time in this agency (the workers). I know, for a fact, that many of you are actually very fine people despite the things you may be directed to do by people who haven't interviewed a member of the public and clearly have absolutely no idea what goes on in an SSA field office. If you are convinced that it is actually me and/or the Union that is the problem you should really think through that thought for a few more minutes.
You are all very fortunate that it is illegal for me, or the union, to advocate for a work stoppage, strike, slowdown, etc... as the law is currently written. Because if the workers of this agency had the right to strike (something all workers should be allowed to do) we would be able to solve all our problems in about a week, a month at most.
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Lastly, I want to express two last points. I am not wholly unreasonable and I will put in more work and effort on any issues that land on my expansive radar than probably all of you are willing or able to put in... And I do most of it on my couch, and lately on annual leave. This is more than “just a job” for me. Unless any of you actually have a passion for getting away with whatever you can, and maybe some of you do, you are already operating at a significant disadvantage.
In addition to the bargaining unit, I may forward this rant to various media outlets and/or Congress.
Adam Pelletier is President of AFGE Local 3343 in Troy, New York. He was reinstated after fighting a 2018 termination case for protesting the Trump administration’s Executive Orders targeting federal sector unions.