IRS-NTEU MEMBERS CELEBRATE NEGOTIATED MONETARY AWARDS

Anytime an agency distributes tens of millions for cash awards to its best performing employees is a great time for a celebration. This includes not only one-time cash awards for high performance, but also quality step increases (QSI’s) for the best of the best.  There are also more cash awards for those bilingual employees who voluntarily use their multi-language skills to deal with taxpayers who do not speak English well-enough to work through the arcane terms of tax law.  But maybe the best part of this award process is that the system was established through negotiations after NTEU demanded that bonus money be handed out more objectively. That was about three decades ago when NTEU…

…went to the bargaining table armed with data that showed that the performance awards distributed under the agency’s personnel manual were a mess. Some executives gave awards to only 17% of their employees while other executives in similarly situated offices awarded over 80% of their employees annually. It was an insane system driven by  the whims of whoever was in charge in a local office. When NTEU demanded statistical data from IRS showing how awards were distributed by office, occupation, grade level, appraisal scores and seniority as well as race, gender, national origin and other protected civil rights categories it showed a massive mess of disparate treatment. NTEU, which some described as a “law firm masquerading as a union” because it has over 80 full-time lawyers on staff, could have had a litigation field day with that evidence pounding IRS leadership to change.

Fortunately, once the data was displayed for the top IRS leaders, they agreed that something had to be done and that the best way to do it would be through negotiations. The parties soon created what is often referred to as Article 18 in their collective bargaining national agreement spelling out the obligations and rules for the various awards. Moreover, the contract gives the union a bundle of data showing how the awards are annually distributed among the 75,000 or so unit employees. The union crunches those numbers and can take action if there are errors. Of course, it was a lot easier before Trump abolished NTEU’s right to grieve and arbitrate, but it can still file EEO complaints, prohibited personnel practices, work with the media, let employees know how their own executive is mistreating them, and get Congressional reps involved. The union is hardly powerless.

NTEU went on from its first awards agreement with IRS to establish similar award programs in other agencies in many of the 38 other agencies when it represents employees.  When agency leaders were not as open-minded as those IRS executives or refused to let the union’s statistical analyses shake their prejudices, the union filed grievances, including claims of civil rights discrimination, and generally won forcing agencies to accept more objective decision-making.

So, “Congrats, NTEU” on taking the oft-chanted demands from politicians and appointees for a more merit-based culture in the federal government and making forcing them to do that.