Is good customer service important? Think of the relief you get when someone helps you exchange a poorly fitting dress or reverse a faulty charge. Now imagine when you’re at risk of being evicted or going a month without money for groceries.
That’s the kind of customer service I do. I work for Social Security Administration in Wilkes Barre.
Every day, my colleagues and I in Pennsylvania and across the country make sure people receive their benefits or stay enrolled in Medicare. We are proud of our work, but because of the administration’s decisions, our morale is as low as it has ever been. What called to me as a job of service is now a fight for survival.
Last month, Social Security turned 90 years old. Unlike many New Deal programs, it wasn’t just a short-term fix while the economy turned around. It provided stability for aging, disabled and unemployed Americans when it was passed, and it established our best long-term tool to fight poverty.
Today it’s a cherished, protected part of Americans’ lives. Officials across the political spectrum have kept its promise to seniors and people who no longer have the ability to work that they can retire and thrive with dignity.
Now that promise is under siege.
The Trump administration has proposed changes to the way Social Security is provided that are already harming seniors, preventing workers from helping them, and degrading vital lifelines.
The administration has made the largest staffing cut in Social Security’s history, indiscriminately cutting more than 7,000 positions, including those with the most experience and knowledge. The staffing changes to Social Security have left the commonwealth and 45 other states with fewer field staff between March 2024 and 2025. As of this past March, there were over 2,700 Social Security workers in Pennsylvania.
Here in the commonwealth, where years of physically demanding work in our state’s heavy industrial economy has left many of us permanently unable to work, it has become increasingly difficult for Americans to count on the payments they’ve earned their whole lives to show up on time. With years of record inflation leaving prices higher than ever before, the difference between an empty bank account and an on-time check has never been more stark.
If you’ve got a problem, new restrictions require you to show up in person at a field office in Pennsylvania. That can mean a long journey for someone whose mobility is limited by age or disability. Under the administration’s first plan, an estimated 5.3 million additional in-person visits would be expected this year.
And what help can we offer them when they show up? For Social Security representatives after the staffing cuts, each day brings its own heartbreak. Resolving healthcare expenses is especially dire; my colleagues field calls from people whose Medicare payments have stopped, leaving them to choose between paying their rent and risking their health or paying their medical bills and facing eviction.
Tens of thousands of people are waiting for Medicare Part B enrollment, meaning they are likely not getting the health coverage they need.
There’s no cheap technological fix for this problem. My colleagues are the boots on the ground who get the work done. Juggling spillover work, denied flexible schedules, unable to take time off for medical appointments, we are blocked from providing the service Americans deserve. Some of us draw down paid time off just to be able to bring their children to daycare. We’re long past robbing Peter to pay Paul.
Social Security’s not perfect.
We want to improve services and get people better help quicker. We have joined labor-management partnerships. We’ve recommended updates. But staffing cuts and reckless policy changes won’t help anyone retire with dignity or make government efficient.
They’ll only do what Trump’s head of the Office of Management and Budget envisioned for government workers: “We want to put them in trauma.”
It’s working.
In the 1937 Supreme Court decision that declared Social Security constitutional, Justice Benjamin Cardozo wrote, “The hope behind this statute is to save men and women from the rigors of the poor house, as well as from the haunting fear that such a lot awaits them when journey’s end is near.”
That’s a lot to put on the shoulders of anyone but that’s what my colleagues in the Social Security Administration do every day.
Will you help us keep that promise?
Since 2005, Barri Sue Bryant has worked for the Social Security Administration in Wilkes-Barre. Bryant has been the president of American Federation of Government Employees Local 2809 since 2018.
