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Washington, D.C.—As evidence of the folly of the administration’s relentless drive to contract federal work to the private sector, more than 5,000 Internal Revenue Service employees are facing the loss of their jobs even as more than $300 billion in tax dollars owed to the federal government goes uncollected, the leader of the union representing IRS employees said today.

At the same time, President Colleen M. Kelley of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) told a boisterous rally of federal employees in New York that taxpayers don’t really have to worry about that because the administration has an idea: it wants to contract out to private collection agencies the work of collecting taxes.

“You know the kind of companies I’m talking about,” President Kelley said to the lunchtime crowd of more than 300 in front of 26 Federal Plaza. “Collection agencies—the most complained-about companies in America.”

President Kelley, who has been leading the fight against the administration’s effort to contract to the private sector as many as one out of every two federal jobs, was joined at the rally by several pro-federal employee members of the House of Representatives from New York.

Democratic Reps. Major Owens (D-11), Joseph Crowley (D-7), Eliot Engel (D-17) and Anthony Weiner (D-9) spoke to the crowd, as did NTEU Chapter 47 President Frank Heffler, whose chapter represents IRS employees in Manhattan. Chapter 47 organized the rally to protest both contracting out and a variety of government actions that reflect how little the administration values the worth and contributions of the federal workforce.

President Kelley focused on those continuing attacks and told the assembled federal workers that “we are in a battle not only to save jobs, but to maintain affordable health care, secure our retirement, preserve bargaining rights and ensure that federal employees get the respect and resources they deserve to continue to serve the nation in so many important ways.”

The NTEU leader urged a concerted effort to “stop the current administration’s aggressive program” of contracting out, opposing fair pay raises for federal workers, ignoring the burden of ever-increasing health care costs and attacking the collective bargaining rights of federal union members.

She told the crowd that the administration’s contracting out efforts seriously hurt ordinary working people, and cited the impact on some of the nearly 500 IRS employees who are losing their jobs in locations as widespread as Richmond, Va., and Rancho Cordova, California, as a result of IRS decisions made earlier this month.

Among those hurt, she said, are a husband and wife at the California location, who have 50 years of IRS service between them, yet now describe themselves as “scrambling to survive.” Another victim is a 17-year IRS employee who will now lose his health care coverage despite the huge monthly expenses incurred to treat his wife’s multiple sclerosis.

“After devoting their careers to the IRS, these loyal civil servants are not just losing their jobs,” President Kelley told the rally, “they are losing their health care, their homes, their hope for a better future for their children, and a secure retirement.”

She said she is particularly infuriated by the refusal of the IRS to use all available programs to mitigate, to the maximum extent possible, the adverse impact on them, noting that NTEU worked with the agency to win approval from Congress for tools “that would help workers who find themselves victims” of reductions-in-force (RIFs) or reorganizations.

NTEU is the largest independent federal union, representing some 150,000 employees in 30 agencies and departments.