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Washington, D.C.—The National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) asked a federal court to stop the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) from illegally using appropriated funds to turn over the work of agency mailroom employees to the private sector without allowing federal workers to compete to keep the work in-house.

If NTEU’s motion for summary judgment is granted, IRS would have no choice but to stop implementing an announced reduction-in-force (RIF) of some 50 mailroom employees. The employees, a substantial number of whom are disabled, are scheduled to lose their jobs by mid-December. NTEU has asked the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to expedite consideration of its motion.

“Not only is the IRS moving forward with an illegal action,” said NTEU National President Colleen M. Kelley, “but I find it particularly appalling that the agency would issue RIF notices to employees, including disabled employees, that are timed to force them out of their jobs just before the holiday season.” Moreover, she said, "it is an outrage that IRS never gave the mailroom employees the chance to show they could do the job better and cheaper that the contractors."

The motion by NTEU is a further step in a suit the union brought against the IRS last May, arguing that the IRS effort to turn over its mailroom work to the private sector violates the fiscal 2004

Consolidated Appropriations Act. The union’s request for accelerated action on this case was triggered by the agency’s RIF notices.

NTEU has forcefully argued that the actual conversion of the jobs hadn’t occurred by the time the funding bill was signed into law on Jan. 23, 2004, and thus, the mailroom work is covered by the ban on using appropriated funds. In fact, the conversion is still ongoing.

NTEU successfully lobbied to have included in the 2004 funding bill language prohibiting the use of funds to convert the work performed by 10 or more federal employees without conducting a public-private competition.

Citing a recent report by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission noting a steep decline of almost 20 percent in the number of federal employees with disabilities, President Kelley deplored the impact of the IRS action on a group of workers that includes a disproportionate number of disabled employees.

“The federal government had long been considered a welcoming place for disabled employees,” President Kelley said, “but this type of action is contributing to the decline in disabled federal workers who often have a harder time finding employment in the private sector. To deny these employees even the opportunity to compete for their jobs is a travesty.”

President Kelley also noted that the prohibition on “direct conversions” in the 2004 appropriations bill is similar to language contained in the May 2003 re-write by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) of federal contracting guidelines. Under the revision of Circular A-76, the IRS should have transformed the direct conversion of work in its mailrooms to a public-private competition. The administration emphasized when it issued the revised circular that its goal was to increase competition, so it eliminated noncompetitive direct conversions. Yet, when NTEU sought OMB’s assistance in requiring the IRS to hold a competition, OMB refused.

As the largest independent federal union, NTEU represents some 150,000 employees in 30 agencies and departments, including some 98,000 in the IRS.