The weather in Evansville turned bitter and aggressively windy just in time for the Wednesday, Jan. 14 demonstration along Green River Road, just outside the local Social Security office property.
Members of the local union of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) were called for a day of action, due to what they describe low staffing and low wages for employees.
According to the union there are currently 4,000 beneficiaries for every Social Security Administration worker.
Evansville is in the eighth Congressional district, which the union said lost 24-percent of its Social Security field staff in 2025.
Cassandra Raine-Francis is a local AFGE union member.
“So today is our national day of action,” she said. “We want the government to fully staff Social Security. Our offices are very short staffed. We also want to make sure that we are able to do the job that we were hired to do, to be able to take care of our communities.”
She said staffing is at an all time low, with employees being shifted from front desk work to covering phones thus extending appointment times.
She said they’re also concerned for another government shutdown creating more hardship for workers.
“Right now, it's hard. Morale is down. Our employees are feeling a lot of the pinch, because we're being pulled in many different directions. We don't have the staffing.”
She said the low staffing creates a hardship for the retired, the disabled and the underserved.
The goal of the national demonstration is to urge the Trump administration to “fully staff the Social Security Administration, pay Social Security workers a living wage and fund the government to provide critical services.”
The Trump administration began cutting staff in early 2025, when a backlog of 2 million beneficiaries already existed, according to the Urban Institute.
The same article suggests that this time last year, the disability claims wait time was 194 days in Indiana and Illinois, and 107 days in Kentucky.
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