The Social Security Administration (SSA) may soon lose thousands more employees as the Trump administration moves ahead with a controversial plan to reclassify federal workers, stripping them of key civil service protections and making them easier to fire.
According to a Reuters report, acting Social Security Commissioner Leland Dudek has directed internal departments to reclassify critical roles, including those in IT, disability determinations, acquisitions, and HR, under a new “schedule policy/career” status. This move, critics say, could make up to 10,000 SSA employees vulnerable to politically motivated dismissals.
President Donald Trump formally announced last week that his administration would proceed with efforts to reclassify tens of thousands of government employees as “at-will” workers involved in policy decisions. The Office of Personnel Management estimates roughly 50,000 federal workers could be affected, around 2% of the total civilian workforce.
Union leaders argue the effort is a sweeping overreach disguised as a performance management reform. “This plan is a draconian overreach that has nothing to do with the administration’s supposed goal of ensuring policymakers toe the line,” said Rich Couture of the American Federation of Government Employees. “It’s about giving SSA the ability to summarily fire employees who have nothing to do with policy-making.”
So far, the SSA has already eliminated about 3,000 jobs via early retirements and buyouts, nearing the halfway mark of a stated 7,000-position reduction. But with Dudek’s reclassification order in motion, observers warn that the cuts could go far beyond initial estimates.
Kathleen Romig, a former SSA employee and now director of Social Security and disability policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, warned that this kind of restructuring could politicize vital parts of the agency. “You don’t want grants politicized or contracts that could lead to self-dealing,” she said. “There’s a tremendous potential for abuse.”
The SSA has not commented publicly on the reclassification effort, but watchdogs and policy experts are sounding alarms. Many argue the move threatens the stability of an already strained agency struggling with understaffing, tech outages, and delayed payments.
This latest development adds to growing concerns about how Trump’s second-term reforms could impact Social Security operations, and by extension, the millions of Americans who rely on the program for retirement, disability, and survivor benefits.
As the proposal moves forward, stakeholders from Capitol Hill to grassroots advocacy groups are likely to push back, setting the stage for a high-stakes battle over the future of federal employment protections and the integrity of America’s largest benefit program.
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