NEWEST IRS-NTEU TERM AGREEMENT NOW AVAILABLE ON-LINE

One of the federal sector’s bellwether agreements has been renegotiated, implemented and put out there for other units to review. Those of you entering your own term negotiations might want to look it over to see what you can use and what might be used against you. The new agreement can be found here and the prior one is still available by clicking the menu button above labeled. The biggest changes appear to be in the Official Time and Awards articles. The agreement is a classic example of a dilemma many bargaining parties face today. With 253 pages of negotiated rules it will be a challenge to make employees and managers aware of what is in the agreement. The odds are that only a very small handful of committed activists on either side of the table will read it completely and have a good command over how to use it. With the arrival of these mega-agreements, contract familiarization, if not training of everyone who will operate under it has become a major challenge—and we are not just talking about training stewards and LMR specialists. The agreement has a good index and its on-line status makes it easy to word search, e.g., the word “priority” appears 76 times in this agreement. But neither is enough to truly empower employees and managers.