The president of a major federal employee union collected a taxpayer-funded paycheck from the Social Security Administration for 34 years without working a single hour for the Social Security Administration — and at one point he wouldn’t have been able to go to the office even if he wanted to, because he was banned for allegedly sending a picture of his penis to a female employee, a Daily Wire investigation found.
Witold Skwierczynski now collects a lifetime pension close to his annual salary. He served as president of the American Federation of Government Employees’ (AFGE) Council 220, representing 22,000 Social Security employees across the country, from 1984 through 2018, when he became president emeritus. That year, the Social Security Administration banned Skwierczynski from all of its facilities, according to documents obtained by The Daily Wire.
Skwierczynski was permitted to draw full-time pay from the Social Security Administration for decades without actually providing any service for beneficiaries thanks to a policy called “official time,” in which the government agrees to let employees do their anti-management advocacy during the workday, rather than using union dues to pay for organizers. Some are on 100% union time, meaning they are paid as Social Security Administration employees but never actually do any work for the agency.
Skwierczynski’s status as a poster boy for the policy raises questions about whether that’s money well spent. As a result of having “free” full-time union reps, federal unions wind up being aggressive in fighting discipline and new rules, even for frivolous actions members wouldn’t have bothered to spend union dues funding. Others may simply use it to draw a paycheck while doing little at all.
Unions are perhaps the most significant roadblock to President Donald Trump’s reforms to the federal workforce. Even after Skwierczynski became president emeritus in 2018, he has continued to play an important behind-the-scenes role as a power-broker in the union, which in November signed a five-year agreement with Joe Biden’s Social Security commissioner attempting to force the Trump administration to leave COVID-era telework rates in place.
One career manager told The Daily Wire that in 2018, “they got every manager in the country on [a call] and said, if you see this guy, don’t let him in your office, he’s banned.”
Another employee told The Daily Wire that he inquired why, and the agency official who oversaw labor relations told him it was because “Witold had sent a d*** pic to an employee in the office at like 2 a.m. one day, and so they told him, ‘We’re going to give you a termination notice unless you retire immediately’… he agreed he’d immediately retire and never come back to any SSA office.”
“This is a disgusting old man,” the employee, speaking on condition of anonymity because he did not have permission from the Social Security Administration, added.
That same year, Skwierczynski retired from government and decided not to run for re-election as union president.
In late 2018, Skwierczynski wrote in an email obtained by The Daily Wire that a grievance had “been filed by the General Committee in July regarding my space access.”
In December, a union official wrote to the agency that it planned to file a second grievance for “denying Mr. Skwierczynski access to Agency space, and refusing to deal with him in representational matters.” But Skwierczynski wrote that “Frankly, since I am retired from SSA and did not seek re-election, I have no interest in pursuing this issue. I have been able to perform my assigned functions for the Council without access to SSA space.”
According to minutes of the union arbitration committee, union leaders said Skwierczynski claimed he did not know why he was banned. The committee voted to advance a grievance anyway, highlighting how aggressively unions fight any discipline action.
Skwierczynski told The Daily Wire he retired because Trump issued an executive order capping “official time” at 25% of an employee’s hours, meaning Social Security employees would have to work at least some of the time for the agency — something he had no intention of doing. “I retired in 2018 due to SSA’s imminent implementation of President Trump’s Executive Order limiting official time to 25% and the fact that SSA was going to send me and other union officials back to our desks to process claims making it virtually impossible to perform my union President’s duties. Also, I was 68 years old and would receive a pension close to equal to my salary from SSA,” he said in an email.
Biden later withdrew that executive order, and it has not yet been reinstated in Trump’s second term. But on Thursday, the Office of Personnel Management ordered agencies to report data about how much “taxpayer-funded union time” was being used, and how. The Biden administration broke from past Democrat and Republican administrations by concealing such data from the public.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green (R-GA), who chairs the House’s Subcommittee on Delivering Government Efficiency (DOGE), said the case highlights why “official time” must be reformed or abolished.
“Not only was this union boss working for his public union against the American taxpayer on official time, he also allegedly sent a photo of his penis to another employee. Both of these things are appalling. It is a slap in the face to every hard-working American,” she told The Daily Wire.
In 2019, Skwierczynski continued to work for the union, this time paid with union funds instead of taxpayer dollars. But in October of that year, the council’s new president wrote to Skwierczynski that Social Security Administration management told him of “the events that lead to your being banned from SSA property.” The letter said “I understand how that is embarrassing to you,” and gave him an opportunity to quietly withdraw from his paid union role.
It said if Skwierczynski did not send a memo “asserting that you have moved on to greener pastures” by November 5, the president would be forced to tell people what happened. On November 3, Skwierczynski did just that, writing that he was busy with his “work for the Ben Jealous for governor campaign in Maryland, for the Bernie Sanders for president campaign in Maryland, and for the labor campaign to elect Virginia democrats,” and therefore could not sign another paid contract with Council 220.
“I know that these are difficult times for the Council as a result of the Trump Executive Orders…I will help in the future where I can. I just think it’s best that I not be an employee of the Council,” he wrote.
Witold Skwierczynski (CSPAN/Facebook)
In an email to The Daily Wire, Skwierczynski said “I gave up my stipend with Council 220 because I wished to expand my horizons of activity with other organizations as a volunteer.”
“I was never banned from SSA facilities. I have accessed SSA facilities since I retired in 2018. The allegation regarding sending pictures of genitalia is false,” he said, adding, “I was never threatened with termination.”
He did not respond to a follow-up asking him to address documents that reference his ban. The Social Security Administration did not return requests for comment.
A union official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told The Daily Wire that Skwierczynski told him he’d meant to send the picture to someone else, but was drunk.
Even after his second exit, Skwierczynski has remained a powerful and active figure in the union. As president emeritus, the union pays for him to attend its major events, where they strategize against the administration. That has continued even as the circumstances of his ban from the Social Security Administration became widely known.
On April 19, 2021, Edwin Osario, the Council’s current vice president, wrote, “I was going to make a resolution to remove Witold’s emeritus status,” but “I am afraid it would have a negative impact on the Council furthering the narrative that the Council is more about exclusion and marginalization than solidarity.”
Skwierczynski saw a resurgence in his influence in 2022 with the election of Jessica LaPointe, Council 220’s current president, after he helped secure her victory, members said.
Skwierczynski was appointed chair of the union’s Retirement Committee. He even met with Martin O’Malley, President Joe Biden’s Social Security Commissioner, in 2023, leading a female union member to write to O’Malley with the subject line: “Protect Women from Witold.”
“Skwierczynski was banned from all 1,200 Social Security Offices,” the email said. “Since Jessica LaPointe became Council 220 President, she has chosen to fully involve Mr. Skwierczynski in Union activities despite his outrageous behavior.” The email faulted O’Malley for letting employees use “official time” to go to union conventions where Skwierczynski would be.
O’Malley did not respond, and both men were at the council’s convention in November 2024, where O’Malley drank and partied with union members before signing the work-from-home contract days later.
A union member told The Daily Wire that LaPointe is “this ultra-liberal, safe-space person and she knows about the d*** pic.” LaPointe did not return a request for comment.
AFGE, which is quick to paint conservatives as racist and sexist, protected and elevated Skwierczynski for decades despite complaints about his conduct.
As far back as 2001, AFGE paid about $30,000 to settle a lawsuit filed by Skwierczynski’s then-assistant, Ulander Stone. The suit alleged that another union employee, who was close with Skwierczynski, called Stone the n-word, and that after she complained, Skwierczynski engaged in precisely the type of retaliatory discipline that unions say they exist to prevent. He allegedly reprimanded her for using a fax machine for “personal business” when she used it to file a discrimination complaint, and killed the ensuing investigation.
Skwierczynski rejected the allegations, telling The Daily Wire that Stone was a felon and he fired her because she was a bad employee.
In 2015, “Skwierczynski called National Secretary Treasurer Eugene Hudson, the union’s highest ranking African American official, a ‘N*’ for the second time during the AFGE national convention,” another lawsuit alleged.
In September 2021, 40 union members filed a complaint with AFGE President Everett Kelley against Skwierczynski, saying he should be stripped of his title of president emeritus and his union membership over his alleged sexual misconduct. Union members said even though the union’s constitution requires such complaints to trigger an investigation, they saw no evidence that basic fact-finding interviews occurred.
“AFGE took no action against me,” Skwierczynski said. “I denied the allegations and the complaint contained no evidence of the allegations.” Kelley did not return a request for comment.
Emails show that Skwierczynski has continued to participate in discussions among top Social Security Administration union leadership, including strategizing about how to stop Trump from making employees go into the office.
AFGE may have a worse track record of empowering abusive managers than most government agencies. In 2020, J. David Cox Sr., then-president of the entire AFGE, which represents 800,000 employees across federal agencies, resigned after being accused of sexually harassing employees including his male personal driver, using union resources to facilitate a lavish life of strip clubs and prostitutes, engaging in racism against his subordinates, and retaliating against those who objected.
The allegation about Skwierczynski using the n-word in 2015 came in a lawsuit centered upon Cox, and said Cox’s lieutenants did nothing to discipline Skwierczynski, but instead “filed disciplinary charges against Mr. Hudson for overreacting to being called the racial slur.”
The lawsuit was dismissed, but 10 men and women came forward to say they were victims of Cox, including an AFGE spokesman who said Cox had stuck his tongue in his ear. An investigation commissioned by the union substantiated most of the Cox allegations.
The lawsuit alleged that Kelley, the union’s current president, signed a secret deal with Cox that led to Cox resigning and Kelley taking his place.
Kelley has called it racist for Trump to excise diversity, equity, and inclusion from the federal government, pledged to stand in the way of his orders to return to the office, and filed a lawsuit against the Department of Government Efficiency. The suit said AFGE should have a seat on DOGE as a “voice for advocating for the resources that government employees need to effectively perform their duties while supporting fair treatment, equitable pay, and safe working conditions.”
Related: Union That Wants Feds To Work From Home Brings Staff Back To Office To Fight Trump
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