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Washington, D.C.— In a negotiations dispute raging for more than two years, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) ignored federal labor law and its bargaining obligations in favor of bad faith bargaining and illegal maneuvers in order to reach its end goal of changing “every sentence” of its agreement with the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU).

The union’s charges were upheld when two arbitrators, in separate filings, found that IRS violated the law in its approach to bargaining and actions taken in regard to the current contract, which remains in effect until a new agreement can be negotiated.

“NTEU now has two highly respected and independent arbitrators ruling that the decisions management made in structuring its term bargaining strategy were illegal from beginning to end,” said NTEU President Colleen M. Kelley. “It is hard to imagine a clearer indictment of those who led management into this strategy.” The term contract expired June 20, 2006.

In a 68-page opinion issued in July, arbitrator M. David Vaughn wrote that the “totality of agency conduct establishes bad faith bargaining.” This decision dealt with efforts to reach mutually-acceptable ground rules—the process that governs bargaining a new term agreement, including such matters as frequency of bargaining sessions and how the parties will handle disputes during the process.

Vaughn found that IRS had violated the law by refusing to notify NTEU of the specific changes it wanted to make to the contract, refusing to give NTEU access to its intranet where IRS personnel policies and practices are recorded, refusing to bargain with NTEU for a reasonable period of time as the law requires, and demanding that the union waive several of its statutory rights before IRS would bargain with it.

The latest decision, issued late yesterday, says agency management acted illegally when, in June 2006, it unilaterally terminated several provisions of the national labor agreement between the parties, along with all national and local partnership agreements. The arbitrator ordered that matters be returned to their previous status.

The two arbitration agreements stem from three national grievances filed by the union. The decision on the third grievance is pending.

NTEU also has taken the aggressive step of asking the Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA) to block the Federal Service Impasse Panel (FSIP) from imposing a bargaining procedure on the union and the IRS. The agency’s goal, NTEU believes, is to get the matter before the pro-management FSIP, in hopes it will impose a new contract on the parties that is much more favorable to management.

“The FSIP is composed entirely of individuals appointed by this president without Senate confirmation and who have shown consistently low regard for employee collective bargaining rights,” Kelley said. The arbitrator who ruled that the IRS has engaged in bad faith bargaining over the ground rules also ruled that the parties were not at impasse and should continue bargaining.

Although the FSIP does not have jurisdiction in the absence of an impasse, it is nonetheless considering the IRS’s request that it impose the agency’s proposed ground rules.

“I believe we are seeing a preview of what the IRS hopes to do with the national agreement,” President Kelley said. “The agency will come to the table a few times, declare that we are at impasse and ask the FSIP to impose its contract proposal. This attempt to circumvent federal labor law will be fought by NTEU at every turn.”

The NTEU leader added: “I would hope someone in IRS management will decide that it is time to terminate the bargaining strategy management so deliberately and confidently implemented in 2006, and to now try to find a way to deal reasonably and legally with NTEU once again.”

In the meantime, the provisions of the NTEU-IRS term labor agreement remain valid and in place, as required by law. The second and latest arbitration decision, issued late yesterday, buttresses that reality. President Kelley added that NTEU remains committed to using every tool at its disposal to ensure that IRS employees are treated fairly at the bargaining table.

NTEU is the largest independent federal union, representing 150,000 employees in 31 agencies and departments.