The Social Security Administration must pay thousands of employees back pay for overtime work, the Federal Labor Relations Authority has ruled.
About 30,000 employees are due money, says Paul Barnes, SSA's deputy commissioner for human resources. The American Federation of Government Employees, which won the ruling against Social Security, estimates that employees may receive a total of $25 million in back pay. Barnes said it is too early to tell how much the ruling will cost the agency.
"We just don't think the estimate the union is giving is reliable," Barnes said. He added that the agency has not yet reached a final decision on whether to appeal the ruling, but he said an appeal is "not likely."
SSA and the union have been battling about the overtime issue for a decade. AFGE contended that employees were underpaid for overtime due them under the Fair Labor Standards Act. The dispute involved "suffered or permitted" overtime, which is overtime that an employee performs that is not pre-approved but that a manager is aware of.
A 1987 federal circuit court decision forced the government to change its overtime regulations. The union and SSA were at loggerheads over whether the change had to be applied retroactively and over the way SSA calculated back pay owed. Despite two previous appeals, SSA has already paid $27 million in back pay to its employees.
The latest ruling affects claims authorizers and claims representatives who worked for the agency between 1982 and 1987, Barnes said. The FLRA decision requires the agency to notify current and former employees by posting notices in SSA offices, searching government records to find employees' addresses and making announcements in external and internal publications. Barnes said some employees will have to go through a special process to make their claims.
"The agency's going to have to do a tremendous amount of work," said AFGE general counsel Mark Roth. "I'd rather be sitting in our position."
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