Former retirement services manager at Iron Mountain calls Musk's claims inaccurate
The former manager of the federal government's Retirement Operations Center at Iron Mountain in Butler County responded to claims Elon Musk made about the facility in an exclusive interview with KDKA-TV.
Kenneth Zawodny, who managed the Retirement Operations Center for 10 years before retiring in 2021, shared that while improvements to their operation can and should be made, the situation isn't as Musk made it out to be.
Musk said a mine elevator slows down the processing of retirements, that they can only process 10,000 retirements a month, and that is all done manually on paper.
"I was a bit upset," Zawodny told KDKA-TV. "Those comments were inaccurate in my opinion."
Musk recently said government employees who work inside the former limestone mine should be shifted to higher productivity roles. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, responding to a question from FOX's Jesse Watters, said President Trump promises to shut down the "cave."
Doing so would be difficult because the overall complex is privately owned. It could, as Musk suggested, mean the jobs are moved elsewhere.
It's all part of the Department of Government Efficiency's efforts to reduce the size of the federal workforce and reduce overall costs.
The Office of Personnel Management's (OPM) more than 600 local employees service the nation's 2.7 million retirees and their families. Nearly every federal retirement application passes through the facility, either on paper or digitally, according to Zawodny, whose official title was Associate Director of Retirement Services.
"The care and compassion that those employees, processing retirements, show for the new retirees, as well as all the federal retirees and widows and widowers of those individuals, is bar none the highest level of care and compassion that can be exhibited," Zawodny said.
Zawodny said the inaccuracies Musk shared in the Oval Office begin with how he said the underground office looks like a "time warp," because it was started in 1955.
"It's nothing more than an office building that's 200 feet underground," Zawodny said.
KDKA-TV has been granted rare access to the massive Iron Mountain complex over the years. OPM is just one of many tenants in the complex. On a tour more than a decade ago KDKA was shown how the complex houses a data center, old movies, and private collections.
While KDKA didn't see the retirement operations center office, Zawodny said the other offices at Iron Mountain look similar to the retirement offices. The Iron Mountain offices appeared like modern offices, just with walls made of painted-white rock inside of drywall or glass.
"The speed at which the mine shaft elevator can move determines how fast people can retire from the federal government, and if the elevator breaks down sometimes then nobody can retire," Musk said.
The retirement operations center is on the same level as the entrance to the facility, Zawodny said.
"I'm not aware of an elevator in the mine," Zawodny said "I never saw one when I worked in the mine. There may be one. It's not used by my former organization at all if there is one there."
KDKA staff members who have toured the mine can also not recall seeing an elevator.
Zawodny said he is not aware of any issues with the mine itself which slow down their ability to process retirements.
It is not the only thing Musk said that is slowing down their ability to process retirements.
"We're told that the most number of people that could possibly retire in a month is 10,000," Musk said. "We're like, well, why, why is that? Well, because all the retirement paperwork is manual on paper. It's manually calculated."
Zawodny said there is no limit on the number of people who can retire.
Publicly available OPM data from 2024 shows more than 10,000 monthly claims were processed during February (10,025) and March (10,711). Only twice over the past 17 months where OPM data is available did it receive more than 10,000 claims in a single month. Most months, it received between 5,000-7,000 claims.
"I'm not sure why he (Musk) came up with that particular number," Zawodny said.
Zawodny also said retirement processing is not completely manual as Musk said it is.
"It is not," Zawodny said. "There are many systems in place to calculate the different types of retirements there are."
What slows OPM down, he said, is the retirement services employees sometimes have to ask for information from different agencies, apply laws, and enter it into an online form. That form calculates what someone is owed in retirement.
When Zawodny took the job in 2011, he said there was a backlog of cases, and they were taking well over 120-140 days to get done. By the time Zawodny left, he said they were processing cases in 60 days or less.
OPM data shows as of January 2025, it had over the past year taken an average of 60 days to process retirement claims. Month to month, that number fluctuated between 47 and 64 days.
The data notes that initial retirement cases produced in less than 60 days took 43 days to complete on average, while those produced in more than 60 days took 110 days to complete on average.
Some cases take longer to process because there is missing information or the retiree did not make the right selection when they were claiming something like life insurance, Zawodny said.
During his tenure, they were able to process claims faster because they added staff and improved processes, Zawodny said.
He sees automation as the path forward to speed up even further. They have made progress in improving automation in the past, but he says the efforts have been underfunded.
"We'd be stymied for a number of, you know, days, weeks, months, years," Zawodny said.
Automation is an area where he believes Elon and his team could help.
"Anybody who has that sort of background, technology experts working for them, could certainly be a part of the solution, instead of, you know, setting it backward," Zawodny said.
Neither OPM nor Iron Mountain responded to KDKA's request for comment.
A White House spokesperson did respond Monday after the initial story aired.
"President Trump and DOGE are committed to maximizing efficiency within the federal government," said White House Spokesperson Liz Huston. "No one can seriously claim storing a retirement system within a mine is an effective or efficient solution. DOGE will continue to review their findings regarding the mine, and make a decision that is best for American taxpayers."
Zawodny said it is worth keeping the jobs at the former mine because he says the area has a steady workforce and is cheaper than a Washington, D.C. office building. He says the underground environment is also perfect for storing records before they are eventually shipped off to the National Archives.
An August 2024 Inspector's General Report did find that while processing retirements is no longer a top management challenge, there is continued concern they can meet their processing speed goal of 60 days. The report did not specify why there was concern.
While retirees do have to wait until claims are processed to get full retirement benefits, they do get "interim" payments in the meantime.
A current retirement services employee at the former mine, who feared being fired if they spoke publicly, told KDKA off-camera who said the stress and anxiety of who could be let go next is on their minds every day.
"We don't sleep, we don't eat, we can't speak, we cry, we get angry, we melt down, but you want to know the one thing we keep doing? We keep waking up and going to the job that we devoted our lives to, devoted to serving people," the employee said. "Yes, we have paper. And on that paper are the lives and careers of civil servants across America who also dedicated their lives to serve."
Zawodny worries about his former employees too.
"I worry that their jobs could be in jeopardy without the full knowledge of individuals who could put those jobs in jeopardy without them having the full knowledge of what those jobs mean to the 2.7 million customers they serve every day," Zawodny said.
If you work or have worked at the retirement operation center and would like to share your story, you can reach Ricky Sayer at Ricky.Sayer@cbs.com
