May 21, 2004
GILES FILES
By
Duncan Giles
President
NTEU Chapter 49
On this & that......
As I write this column on a cool and dreary morning, the weather reminds
me of the state of Partnership at high levels of this organization. The vast
majority of frontline managers, most second-line managers and some executives
realize that this is the smart way to do business – involve NTEU on the front-end
so there won’t be as many problems when things are rolled out. Unfortunately,
this attitude seems to have taken a nosedive inside the beltway.
When decisions were rolled out from on high, there was a time not so long
ago when I could understand the logic behind those actions. A
lot of times I would not agree with the decisions, but at least I could understand
the logic behind them. Anymore, one is hard-pressed to find logic behind
most decisions.
As an agency, we are understaffed, overworked and therefore continuously
asked to do more with less. At the same time, morale among front-line
employees (and most managers) is extremely low. What’s the reason for all
this? IRS people on the frontlines are trying to figure out how to accomplish
the directives from on high without working 30 hours a day, 10 days a week.
It’s pretty consistent across the board. From the Call Site, where
revisions to the Embedded Quality (EQ) Agreement are being thrust upon sites
unilaterally (that’s being fought nationally). In Insolvency, where
IRS is saying that not only are your jobs being centralized, but you are
also not allowed to work Flexiplace (that management decision has been forwarded
up for arbitration consideration). In Case Processing, where the powers
that be are not only wanting to move employees’ jobs but are also denying
those same employees the right to work Credit Hours (just started working
on that unbelievable edict). To the Field, where the new initiatives
in both Exam and Collection will result in managers being more involved in
case work. On the surface, that’s a laudable goal, but I fear the reality
for all concerned will not be the intended goal (less time on the case by
the manager assisting) but the opposite will result (more time meeting and
less on actual work).
There is a bottom line in all this. It’s true in Indiana and it’s true
across the nation. IRS needs enough employees to get the job done.
I can say with certainty that, as a whole, Indiana IRS employees are more
diligent and dedicated then most. We are just looking for some help.
Instead we get actions like the Senate putting private debt collection into
tax legislation passed last week. So we don’t get more workers to collect
money our government needs and do it properly. Nope, we are going to
pay collection agencies a commission to do it for us, and the contractors
will get the “cream of the crop” cases (if the House passes a similar bill).
The potential for abuse scares me to death.
As always, NTEU will do what can be done in partnership with management at
the local and national levels. However, if we need to go at it with
every tool in our arsenal, we are prepared to do that as well.
That's it for now.
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CONTRACTING COLLECTION
WORK
As Duncan Giles mentioned in his column, the Senate enacted international
corporate tax legislation May 11th which includes language allowing IRS to
use private contractors to collect federal tax debts. Unfortunately,
NTEU could not convince the Senate to keep this language out the bill, as
the House had done. However, we were able to insert some important
language into the measure.
Our Legislative Department was able to limit the contracting to a maximum
of five years from the date of enactment and to allow the Secretary to retain
up to 25% of tax collections from private collection agencies to be used
for enhanced in-house tax collection efforts at the IRS. The modified provision
also requires detailed reporting on the costs and benefits of any private
collection contracts and reports on any abuses of contractors. Contractors
would also be held to the same standards as IRS employees, including section
1203 of RRA 1998.
The House will pass it’s final version of this bill, then a House-Senate
conference committee will convene to write the final version. NTEU
will continue to work to keep any private tax collection provisions out of
the House version of this bill and out of any final bill.
HEALTH SAVINGS ACCOUNTS:
DANGEROUS TO YOUR HEALTH
You can’t tell a book by it’s cover, and you can’t judge a new plan for federal
employees by its name. The term “Health Savings Account” does sound appealing.
You may have heard or read some of the supposedly wonderful arguments in
favor of HSAs from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and others tied
to the Bush Administration. However, NTEU has carefully studied HSAs
and has come to the conclusion that this plan is bad for the federal workforce.
Here’s why.
An HSA allows an employee to make tax-exempt contributions to the plan, and
may use that money to pay health care expenses. Employees would also
provide a high-deductible health insurance policy. Whatever money is
left in the tax-exempt account may remain in that account and carried to
future years. Our view is that an HSA is a terrific plan as long as
you are healthy. It only becomes a bad idea when you have to deal with
health problems.
If these plans become popular, federal employees could end up with two separate
and very unequal health care systems – HSAs and the current Federal Employees
Health Benefit Plan (FEHB). FEHB has been held up as a model of how
a health plan should be administered. However, if we end up with younger
healthier federal workers in HSAs, and older, less healthy workers in FEHB,
the FEHB premiums would skyrocket.
Here’s what NTEU National President Colleen Kelley says - “All of this has
the very serious and very real potential to threaten the stability of the
FEHBP program.” We at Chapter 49 agree.
OPM says HSAs will be offered to federal employees next year. We think
that’s a bad idea and we hope OPM reconsiders this rush to the HSA.