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Employee Jitters Mark ‘Next Steps’ Reopening Plan for IRS

Posted on June 5, 2020

The National Treasury Employees Union urged the IRS to proceed cautiously with its next-step reopenings of tax agency facilities in eight states and Puerto Rico through June.

“We understand that the IRS has a backlog of important work that cannot be done remotely and they need to restart systems as soon as possible, but our concerns about the coronavirus pandemic have not changed,” NTEU President Tony Reardon said in a June 4 statement.

IRS workers are still concerned about using public transportation to and from their offices, working in enclosed spaces with hundreds of colleagues, and ensuring work stations are consistently and thoroughly sanitized, Reardon said.

More than two months after IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig issued his March 27 evacuation order, transitioning more than half of its in-office workforce to remote teleworking, the nation’s tax agency has started reopening processing centers, notice printing facilities, and call centers, according to an internal memo Rettig sent to employees June 3. Volunteer IRS employees reported back to work June 1 in Kentucky, Texas, and Utah, the memo notes.

Rettig announced in his “Next steps” memo that IRS facilities in Georgia, Tennessee, Missouri, and Michigan will reopen June 15. Operations in Indiana, Ohio, California, Oregon, and Puerto Rico are expected to restart June 29, he said.

The NTEU is still awaiting details from the IRS on how many workers will be called back in June, and to which locations and business divisions. According to Reardon, the IRS has said it will limit employee recalls to promote social distancing.

“We will continue to focus on nonportable work,” Rettig wrote. “Returning employees will be contacted as early as next week, allowing them the necessary time to make personal arrangements like childcare and other important matters.”

“The health and safety of our employees will always be our top priority,” Rettig pledged. “Our facilities staff is working around the clock to ensure the appropriate precautions are taken for the well-being of our employees.”

To-Do List

Chad Hooper, president of the Professional Managers Association and an IRS employee, said the agency has assured his group that it has sufficient personal protective equipment for returning workers, “and I don’t have any knowledge of anyone concerned about a lack of PPE or inadequate cleaning.”

However, Reardon said the NTEU is awaiting an update on IRS cleaning protocols and supplies of hand sanitizer, disinfectant wipes, and masks.

“We still believe that the federal government can do more to protect workers by broadening testing capabilities and screening employees upon their arrival at the work site,” Reardon said.

The NTEU also wants the Office of Personnel Management to consider allowing employees to use administrative leave, split shifts, job-sharing, and part-time work schedules, instead of having to claim limited personal leave to care for children, “which is not a sustainable solution,” Reardon said.

Reardon noted that IRS employees are numbered among the approximately 105,000 Americans already felled by the virus. “This week’s return of workers in three states, in addition to those who have already volunteered to return, will test the safety of the IRS’s recall plans,” he said.

Hooper said that “we support [Rettig’s] careful approach to resuming operations with employee safety as the priority and do not believe the public would be well-served by an immediate return to work only to be significantly hampered by workplace virus outbreaks nationwide.” Most IRS employees are over age 50, and many have medical conditions that would lead to complicated, or even lethal, COVID-19 infections, he added.

In fact, Hooper said, some of the IRS’s coronavirus emergency plans and its struggle to reopen safely may hinge on one word — money.

IRS oversight bodies, IRS commissioners and Treasury secretaries past and present, and paid preparer associations “have all attributed many of the agency’s challenges to its threadbare budget,” Hooper said. IRS IT modernization plans haven’t been prioritized since the 1998 IRS Restructuring and Reform Act, he noted.

Congress needn’t wait for the IRS to make a special request for funding — the Congress has been made aware countless times of our agency’s urgent need for funding,” Hooper said.

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