On Its 90th Anniversary, AFL-CIO Sounds the Alarm on Threats to Social Security

On the 90th anniversary of the Social Security Act, AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler released the following statement on the Trump administration’s attacks on Social Security, including the firing of federal workers:  

Social Security was born out of a promise: that no one who works their entire life should have to spend their later years in poverty. Working people fought and won this earned benefit and the right to retire with dignity. But on its 90th anniversary, that right is under threat like it hasn’t been in decades. 

While the Trump administration gives tax handouts to billionaires, its Project 2025 and DOGE agenda is endangering the retirement savings that hardworking Americans have paid into their whole lives. DOGE has cut services, fired workers and—with the Supreme Court’s permission—forced its way to access our most private information. The result is DOGE-driven cuts and firings of staff at Social Security offices across the country, forcing seniors to spend hours on hold and jump through hoops to get the payments they rely on for housing, medicine, and groceries. 

Despite promising that Social Security “won’t be touched,” Trump administration officials are praising their billionaire budget bill as a “backdoor” to privatize Social Security. Meanwhile, legislation to stabilize Social Security’s future and expand its benefits to keep up with today’s cost of living has stalled in Congress again and again—with members who claim to be champions of the working class in no rush to move it forward.

Everyone deserves to retire comfortably after a lifetime of hard work. We should be able to care for those we love from childhood to old age without worrying about going broke. If this administration thinks it can come for our Social Security without a fight from the labor movement, it’s sorely mistaken. Working people earned our retirement, and we’ll fight to protect it for our futures and generations to come.

Background

How attacks are impacting Social Security on its 90th anniversary:

• Proposed changes that would have ended its telephone support service, as well as forced people to verify their identity in person instead of by phone, endangering millions of Americans’ ability to access their hard-earned benefits––especially people with disabilities, seniors and those in rural communities.
• Wait times have skyrocked, with callers spending more than three hours on hold with limited callback options, blocking people from getting answers to their questions or applying for benefits by phone.
• Phone delays have driven “exponential growth” in foot traffic at already understaffed offices, leading to processing backlogs and lost claims.
• DOGE-driven policies are causing the agency to shed experienced IT experts who maintain and upgrade critical agency systems, creating increased risk for payment errors and system instability, including five outages in a single month.
• Scammers are exploiting the DOGE-driven chaos, targeting vulnerable seniors with fake emails demanding identity verification, while phone delays prevent many from reaching the agency to verify if messages are legitimate.

Contact: Onotse Omoyeni, 202-637-5018