Since March 17 of 2020, the Social Security Offices have been attending the public mostly remotely. The in-person appointments were very restricted to critical occasions. These situations are cases of people without food or medicine. The good news is that the agency has announced it started preparing the staff to resume regular operations by January 3, 2022.
“The Social Security Administration recently announced the next steps in navigating the safe return of employees to our new normal operations,” Nicole Tiggemann, speaker for the SSA, stated in an interview to the AARP website.
Many workers would return to the offices as soon as Dec. 3 and the remaining number of servants would come back by Jan. 3. The decisions, however, will depend on the negotiations with the unions. The issue to be discussed will be the safety and health standards not only to protect workers, but the public as well. The most affected are elders and people with disabilities. According to the unions, the standards were not fully formulated at this time.
AARP has praised the initiative to return to normalcy. “Obviously, from our point of view, we would like to see those offices open and staffed as soon as possible,” says Joel Eskovitz, director of Social Security and Savings at the AARP Public Policy Institute. “It’s been a year and a half, and there are just some services that can’t be done remotely.”