“The ‘automation bomb’ could destroy 45 percent of the work
activities currently performed in the United States,” David Ignatius in the
Washington Post stated this week, citing a study completed by McKinsey &
Co.
Ignatius concluded:
“Politicians need to begin thinking boldly, now, about a world in which
driverless vehicles replace most truck drivers’ jobs, and where factories are
populated by robots, not human beings. The best way to cushion this future is
to start planning for how Americans will be able to take care of their families
— and find meaningful work — in a world where most traditional jobs have
vanished.”
One way this “automation bomb” currently impacts Social
Security disability claimants, the most fragile members of the workforce,
should be corrected now.
Two of the five steps in the Social Security disability
evaluation involve jobs. The fourth step
concerns the job(s) that the disabled claimant used to do, and the fifth step, the
potential jobs that the claimant might be able to do.
Social Security finds that if you can do your prior relevant
work, you are not disabled. The Supreme
Court has endorsed the Social Security administration’s position that even if
your job no longer exists, you are not disabled. See, Barnhart
v. Thomas, 540 U.S. 20 (2003). In that case Thomas had been an elevator
operator (prior to the time her job was eliminated), and at the time her case
was considered by Social Security (she applied in 1996), very few elevator operators’
jobs existed. See http://disabilitydisability.blogspot.com/2014/02/the-grammatical-rule-of-last-antecedent.html
When the sequential analysis moves on to the fifth step,
Social Security considers whether there are a “significant” number of other jobs
the claimant can do. Social Security
projects a 2019 start date for a new system of jobs analysis. See https://www.ssa.gov/disabilityresearch/occupational_info_systems.html
Given the automation crisis, we are now experiencing and
will experience in the future, Social Security law has to change to overturn
the Thomas decision and provide that if
a claimant can do his or her past relevant work, but that the job no longer
exists, the disability evaluation must proceed to the fifth step, rather than
there be an automatic denial at step four.
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