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would eliminate the entire Department of Energy (DOE) environmental management program and slash $989 million from the budget of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and another $167 million from the Treasury Department, also call for federal employees to pay $1.5 billion over 10 years for parking at their work places, Kelley said. The RSC proposal would generate significant cuts in the school lunch program, in the work of the Federal Election Commission (FEC) and that of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
November 2, 2007 M E M O R A N D U M
TO: IRS Chapter Presidents
RE: FSIP’s Decision on Recruiting and Retention Allowances; Student Loans
Over four years ago, NTEU initiated midterm bargaining with the IRS over a proposal that would have established a formal program for repaying student loans as well as giving employees salary increases and cash bonuses in order to recruit and retain the best employees. Just prior to submitting our demands to the IRS, a law had been passed giving agencies the authority to use these extra compensation flexibilities to compete for the best talent in the labor market. Since its passage many agencies have made aggressive use of these payment options. However, the IRS has remained steadfastly opposed to entering any agreement with us which would ensure these flexibilities are used objectively and wisely among its employees. When we initiated these proposals, we knew that we had sound economic arguments supporting us. For example, if management would just use retention allowance option among the thousands of highly-skilled employees who can retire at any moment, it could retain the best tax talent in the country rather than lose employees to retirement or to private firms or companies. Imagine the impact it would have on the best retirement-eligible Revenue Agents, e.g., 4.8 appraisal scores and above, if we had a program that paid them the 25 percent salary differential to stay with the Service a few years longer. These employees each produce millions of dollars of assessments each year, and all it would cost about $25,000 per year to keep that talent. However, we also knew when we initiated these proposals that our biggest hurdle to obtaining an objective system of using these flexibilities would be the FSIP. It was clear to everyone that the seven Panel members appointed by President Bush are unquestionably hostile to unions and employees. It has gone so far as to announce that it does not believe unions should even be allowed to put a dispute before the Panel involving any kind of incentive payments unless management agrees to let the Panel resolve the matter. Here is how they stated their policy in a recent decision. The Panel believes that limitations upon the discretion to distribute performance and incentive awards should not be unilaterally imposed upon management. While employers and unions are free to reach agreements through collective bargaining which cede some or all of management's discretion in this area, the Panel is reluctant to impose restrictions on an employer's prerogatives where it has not chosen to do so voluntarily. In other words, despite the fact that the statute and courts say that awards are negotiable and despite the fact that the statute requires the Panel to settle disputes in an unbiased manner, the Bush appointees have said they are simply going to ignore the law and courts on this issue and let management unilaterally decide what it wants to do. Given that it is extremely difficult to overturn an FSIP decision before the Federal Labor Relations Authority or courts, the Panel has essentially undercut our ability to negotiate incentives. Management knew that as well as we did when we started this bargaining and relied on it to avoid giving up any discretion to do whatever it wants for whomever it wants. As I am sure you have been able to predict by now, the Panel rejected every one of the NTEU’s proposals in favor of adopting management’s proposals. We will now decide whether or not to file a legal challenge to this decision. If we decide to challenge the decision’s legality, we would likely refuse to sign the agreement embodying the management proposals which the Panel adopted in full. The other thing we can do now that it is clear management has total responsibility to run the program any way it chooses, is move our efforts into the grievance arbitration arena where we will not have to deal with Bush appointees. You may have read in other NTEU publications that we recently convinced an arbitrator that the management of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) had so unfairly administered the total authority the FSIP granted it to distribute annual cash bonuses the agency had violated various civil rights laws. We obtained all the data on how management ran the program, analyzed the statistics ourselves, hired a professional statistician as an expert witness at the arbitration, and won a ruling that SEC management had violated the rights of African-American employees and employees over the age of 40 by giving them very few awards. I plan to conduct a similar inquiry of how IRS uses these flexibilities to see if there are any patterns of unfair or disparate treatment. If there are, we will pursue corrective action.
Virtually every time I attend a meeting anywhere in government where the topic involves federal employee retirement predictions, the expected wave of retirements is described as a tsunami-like threat to the ability of government to operate effectively. Congress knew this when it urged agencies to start using these flexibilities to recruit and retain the best employees, and other agencies are taking the lead with these flexibilities to hire and keep the best talent. But when the President’s administration had a chance to push the leadership of the one agency that produces the vast amount of money needed to run the government, it settled for letting IRS management do what IRS management wants to do without any pressure or requirement that it operate the program fairly. Obviously, I am disappointed. But, as I said above, I am not surprised and welcome the opportunity to take this effort to the next level — whether that is before professional arbitrators, in personal conversations with agency leaders, or elsewhere. The FSIP decision is attached for your information.
Colleen M. Kelley National President
Ed Note: The decision is not attached to this web site copy of the above memorandum |
