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Washington, D.C.—The president of the union representing some 98,000 employees of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) today expressed the willingness of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) to work with newly-named IRS commissioner-designate Mark Everson on the “continuing and very important issues” facing the IRS and its employees.

Everson, deputy director for management of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), was named today by the White House to replace former IRS Commissioner Charles O. Rossotti, who completed a five-year term last November.

He was one of several White House officials with whom NTEU President Colleen M. Kelley worked over the union’s concerns during development of the Department of Homeland Security. “While we disagreed on matters affecting employees to be transferred into the new department,” President Kelley said, “Everson dealt with NTEU in a forthright manner and recognizes the role of NTEU in representing employees.”

She noted that the new commissioner, if confirmed, would take office at a time when the IRS is facing “serious issues that effect every American taxpayer,” including implementation of the ongoing IRS restructuring, the need for adequate agency funding and staffing—particularly in the compliance area—and efforts to contract out the jobs of IRS employees to the private sector.

“NTEU will stress to the new commissioner not only the critical need of the IRS for stable and adequate funding, but the rightful expectation of members of the public that their tax information is private information not just in theory, but in fact,” President Kelley said.

NTEU has been leading the fight against Bush administration efforts to contract to the private sector as many at 850,000 federal jobs.

The union leader said she is especially concerned with the administration’s proposed wholesale revisions of federal contracting practices to make it easier to send government work to the private sector.

In particular, she has criticized its plan to classify all federal jobs as commercial in nature, and thus subject to being contracted out, unless and until an agency can justify in writing that a particular job is inherently government.

“Clearly, the work of the IRS needs to be in the hands of federal employees,” she said, “and that is a point I will emphasize to the new commissioner.”

NTEU is the largest independent federal union, representing some 150,000 employees in 28 agencies and departments.