Home Media Center News Releases

Washington, D.C.—The National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) has asked an arbitrator to issue a stay, blocking the Internal Revenue Service from using educational requirements that violate both federal law and the NTEU-IRS contract to hire hundreds of new employees.

Despite a ruling earlier in July 2004 that the IRS’s educational requirements for the position of Revenue Agent (RA) go well beyond government-wide standards and in fact violate federal law regarding the imposition of minimal educational requirements, the IRS is preparing to offer RA positions to hundreds of job seekers who were evaluated based on the illegal requirements.

The practical effect of the illegal requirements and subsequent job offers is to deny promotional opportunities to well-qualified IRS employees who meet the requirements that were previously in effect.

“We believe the effect of the arbitrator’s decision is clear,” said National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) President Colleen M. Kelley. “The agency should not be using these illegal educational requirements to fill these jobs.”

NTEU has been embroiled in a fight with the IRS over the agency’s increase in the number of college-level accounting credits required of candidates for a position as an RA from the

government-wide standard of 24 hours to 30 hours and impose five required areas of coursework as a “selective placement factor” for the position.

In striking down the IRS’s 30-hour and five course requirement, an arbitrator said that under federal law, minimum education requirements can be imposed only if an agency shows that the duties of the position can only be performed by an individual who meets those requirements.

That clearly is not the case here, President Kelley said, emphasizing that thousands of IRS RAs presently are performing the duties of their position successfully and professionally without meeting the 30-hour and five course requirements. The arbitrator also ruled that the imposition of the five-course requirement violated the NTEU-IRS contract.

The ruling ordered NTEU and the agency to negotiate over the appropriate remedy for the violation, and to return the matter to him for a decision on that question in the event the parties could not agree. The matter is now back in an arbitrator’s hands for a decision on the remedy.

Shortly after the issuance of the original arbitration decision declaring the requirements illegal, President Kelley objected to IRS Commissioner Mark Everson claiming, before the Senate Finance Committee, that the arbitration decision is an example of the obstacles the IRS faces in strengthening its enforcement activities and closing the so-called ‘tax gap’ between taxes owed and revenue collected.

The successes the IRS has had, Kelley wrote to Everson, are due to the dedication, commitment, skills, and hard work of front-line employees. "For whatever successes the IRS has not had, I suggest you look to where the real problems are. They are not caused by the number of accounting credits or courses that revenue agents have," Kelley said.

In fact, the arbitrator wrote that clear and convincing evidence in the case establishes that the duties of a revenue agent can and are being performed successfully by thousands of individuals who do not possess the unneeded additional educational requirements.

NTEU is the largest independent federal union, representing some 150,000 employees in 30 agencies and departments, including more than 98,000 in the IRS.