Local Social Security union leader puzzled by closure of civil rights office; DOGE cancels 4 Wisconsin leases

 

MILWAUKEE (CBS 58) -- For Greg Bachinski, the start of this week was unlike any other he'd experienced since starting work for the Social Security Administration (SSA) in 1974.

A claims representative for the SSA, he said he'd received an email Saturday from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM). It was a message federal workers around the country had received asking them to provide five things they did last week, but Bachinski said he didn't see it until Monday.

"Everybody got in on Monday morning and had an email saying, 'You have to tell us what you did the last week or we're gonna terminate you.'" Bachinski said. "And then six hours later, there's another email saying, 'Oh, forget that. It's all voluntary.'"

There was another twist on Tuesday. The SSA announced it was closing its Office of Civil Rights and Equal Opportunity, which according to its website, is tasked with ensuring equal employment opportunities regardless of race, color, national origin, religion, age, disability, genetic information and sex, as well as resolving discrimination complaints.

Bachinski is president of his chapter of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), which represents Social Security employees in Wisconsin and part of northern Illinois. He said the office's elimination would not directly impact the jobs of his union, but he questioned how discrimination complaints would be handled moving forward.

"Nobody knows who's gonna take over these tasks, what's gonna happen with them," he said. "You're gonna either take those people and put them somewhere else, but they'll still be working, or else you're gonna have people that don't really know how to do the job."

According to a release Tuesday, SSA employees in the civil rights office have been put on administrative leave. Lee Dudek, the acting SSA commissioner, said responsibility for handling equal employment opportunity complaints would transfer "to other SSA components."

“Terminating the Office of Civil Rights and Equal Opportunity, and reassigning statutory responsibilities performed by this office, advances the President’s goal to make all of government more efficient in serving the American public," Dudek said in the agency's release.

Bachinski said the closure was the latest source of confusion for SSA workers. He said the OPM had previously sent employees an email stating they'd need to return to fully working out of the office by Monday. Bachinski said that was followed by a later email backing off that specific deadline.

"We were told we were gonna have to return to the office by the 24th," he said. "But then they came through with an order that said, 'well, you're gonna have to return, but we don't know when.'"

Bachinski said employees at his office in Greenfield already work a minimum of three days per week in the office, and he's in the office all five days. 

Physical federal footprint shrinks in Wisconsin

According to the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), headed up by President Donald Trump's billionaire advisor, Elon Musk, the agency has terminated the leases of four federal office locations in Wisconsin.

The largest lease was originally described as a Department of Defense office in Milwaukee, which DOGE lists as costing $186,700 to rent annually. DOGE updated the description Tuesday night to being under the Defense Contract Management Agency (DCMA).

There is a DCMA office in the Schlitz Park campus near downtown, and a CBS 58 crew observed government vehicles still in the lot Tuesday night. The leasing agent for Schlitz Park did not respond to questions Tuesday.

The DOGE website also lists closures of a United States Fish and Wildlife Service office in Madison, which had been paying $58,142 in yearly rent, a DCMA office in Merrill with an annual rent of $6,067 and an SSA office in Green Bay, which had an annual rent of $26,229.

Bachinski said the SSA office in Green Bay handled administrative reviews, but he didn't think the impact of its closure would be too severe as he anticipated judges reviewing cases would be able to do so elsewhere with minimal disruption.

He was, however, concerned the string of conflicting emails would cause confusion, and having the SSA close offices without specific plans to shift those duties will also hurt productivity.

"In any workplace, if you throw in things like this, there's gonna be talking and parrying and 'what's gonna happen' and so on," he said. "And it hurts the flow of work."