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Washington, D.C.—The National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) today filed suit against the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), seeking to prevent the agency from turning over the work of mailroom employees to the private sector without providing the federal workers the chance to compete for their jobs.

The suit, filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, charges that the IRS violated the fiscal 2004 Treasury-Transportation Appropriations Act. NTEU successfully lobbied for language to be included in that Act prohibiting the use of any fiscal 2004 funds to convert the work performed by 10 or more federal employees without conducting a public-private competition. Under the IRS plan, more than 50 IRS mailroom employees—a large percentage of whom are disabled—would lose their jobs.

NTEU President Colleen M. Kelley said that IRS’s action violates Congress’s clearly expressed intent to stop direct conversions in fiscal 2004. Kelley added that NTEU strongly disagrees with the IRS that the mailroom work should be considered converted to the private sector, and therefore not covered by the appropriations ban, as of the date it entered into its agreement with the contractor—Oct. 31, 2003. Despite that contract, the actual conversion of the jobs hadn’t occurred by the time the

appropriations bill was signed into law on Jan. 23, 2004. In fact, the conversion is still ongoing.

Kelley noted that the appropriations bill echoes the Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) decision to eliminate conversions to contract without a competition when it revised its Circular A-76 last May. Indeed, President Kelley said, OMB “has repeatedly trumpeted the fact that the new Circular guarantees federal employees a chance to compete to keep their jobs.” Under the transition rules in the new Circular, she said, “the IRS should have transformed” this direct conversion into a public-private competition “a long time ago.” OMB, however, refused NTEU’s demand that it intervene to stop IRS from conducting this direct conversion, thus leading NTEU to file this lawsuit to enforce the appropriations language.

“It is especially discouraging that IRS has refused to allow a group of employees that includes a large percentage with severe disabilities a chance to compete for their jobs,” Kelley said.

For some time, NTEU has been leading the fight against the Bush administration’s relentless drive to contract federal work to the private sector. Since its first days, this administration has been pursuing an aggressive initiative to move as many as one out of every two federal jobs into private hands.

NTEU is the largest independent federal union, representing some 150,000 employees in 29 agencies and departments, including 98,000 IRS employees.