IRS employees called back to their workplaces for essential in-person tasks should be vaccinated before being required to do so, according to the chief of the agency’s biggest labor union.
Treasury has compiled lists of employees throughout the department who management believes should be prioritized for COVID-19 vaccinations, though supplies are short, National Treasury Employees Union President Tony Reardon said during a March 16 press conference.
“The current administration is trying to pick up where the prior administration really dropped the ball,” Reardon told reporters before kicking off the NTEU’s virtual legislative conference. “Unfortunately, there was no plan ever put in place to ensure that federal employees at the IRS . . . were to get the vaccine,” he said.
The IRS started recalling employees to its processing centers and for other operations in June 2020, before any vaccines were available, Reardon noted. More than 500 of the agency's facilities were ordered closed in March 2020 by IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig because of the pandemic.
“If you’re going to tell people they have to come to the workplace, you should be taking care of them and making sure they’re safe — and the only real way to do that is to get people vaccinated,” Reardon said.
Neither Treasury nor the IRS responded to Tax Notes’ requests for information about potential plans for vaccinating their employees.
Budget Worm Turns?
The NTEU’s annual legislative conference — being held virtually this year due to pandemic restrictions — outlined a five-part agenda the union hopes will draw congressional support in the coming days and weeks.
High on the list is “significant” funding increases for the IRS, including money to address the agency's chronic personnel shortages, the union explained in a flyer.
Reardon said that based on recent conversations he’s had with Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, “it was clear to her that for a wide variety of reasons [the IRS] needs additional funding,” including to restore staffing that has declined by 20,000 employees over the last 10 years.
Reardon declined to specify what he considered a significant amount of IRS funding. The NTEU is waiting to see President Biden’s fiscal 2022 budget proposal for the agency, he said, adding, “I think it’s pretty safe to conclude that it won’t come out of the gate with $54 billion in funding cuts like we saw with the previous administration.”
Reardon said he is encouraged by what he perceives to be a change of mood in Congress about funding the IRS.
The extra funding provided by Congress in the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (P.L. 117-2) is “an important recognition that the agency does need more resources to carry out its responsibilities,” Reardon said.
Congress allocated $1.8 billion, over and above the IRS’s $12 billion fiscal 2021 budget, to help distribute the latest round of economic impact payments, establish an advance child tax credit payment program, and for other pandemic-related purposes.
Reardon said the NTEU’s pleas for additional IRS funding have long fallen on deaf ears in Congress. “I really am starting to see a significant shift in that now,” he said. “And I think that’s a good thing.”