January 17, 2003

GILES FILES
By
Duncan Giles
President
NTEU Chapter 49

On this and that....

First off I’d like to welcome back everyone that took some time off during the holidays and wish you all a happy and prosperous new year.  

Speaking of the new year, the SB/SE support of Walk-Ins sure seems like last year to me.  Our crack negotiator Karen McKibben informs me that we are still trying to get an agreement.  However, at this point it’s come to its annual dead halt.  Karen is hopeful that the issues can be resolved before going to a neutral third party later this month.  

At the Call Site, I am glad we were able to get the group meeting time back to where it contractually should be.  The initial problems were caused by a misinterpretation that management (to their credit) corrected swiftly once NTEU pointed the correct provisions out to them.

In MITS, we are still trying to get our folks in Indiana placed in as many of their “new” positions as we can.  For those that don’t know, MITS is undergoing a massive reorganization in anticipation of competing in the A-76 (private sector outsourcing) process and it isn’t pretty.  Ask any employee in MITS how much sense their reorganization makes and then stand back.  It will make you thankful you are where you are.  

In LMSB, by contrast, their reorganization seems to be going much more smoothly.  Perhaps that’s due to the going premise that their employees are responsible adults.  A novel approach I grant you in the Service, but one I hope will be picked up by other Divisions.
Here are a couple of housekeeping notes.  If you have moved in the last year and not updated your address with NTEU please let us know.  IRS doesn’t inform national NTEU of address changes.  If you feel that we don’t have your correct address, please go to -
www.nteu.org —  and change it.  Or give any Chapter 49 steward your old address and the new correct address and we will take care of it for you.  We’ve also been having big problems with Transactional Processing in getting membership forms processed.  We now have a new specific person to contact...….so if you have filled out a Form 1187 (membership) form in the last several months and haven’t heard anything please either get another one from your favorite steward or go to www.nteu.org to Member Benefits and you can fill one out online.  I apologize for this but we think there is finally a light at the end of the tunnel on this.  It’s been a longstanding issue.

Lastly, I just want to send out a big thank you to all stewards.  I just took a look at our list of stewards and can’t find one that hasn’t been active in at least one issue (most of them several) the past month or so.  We are really blessed here in Indiana to have so many fine stewards willing to look out for their fellow employees in this state.  I do deeply regret, however, that due to personal reasons another steward has resigned.  Delores Bell did a great job in her time as a steward and her contributions will be sorely missed.  Thanks for all your help Delores!

That’s it for now.  
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CONTRACTING OUT OUR WORK:
AN UPDATE  

Duncan mentioned the A-76 process as it applies to the MITS reorganization.  MITS is not the only part of the IRS being impacted by a major push from the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to contract out work now done by federal employees.

Let’s start with the people at the Form and Publication telephone number (1-800-3676).  Originally, IRS was looking at contracting out this work and placing the employees currently staffing those phones to W&I telephone work.  However, the Service has apparently decided to separate the feasibility study on their operation and will soon decide whether these folks are even allowed to compete for their jobs. 

NTEU was informed in December that the IRS Executive Steering Committee has decided to move forward on a pilot test to measure the accuracy and quality of a private vendor providing tax law help on the IRS toll-free lines.  IRS is expected to begin the process of procuring a vendor for this test next month.  Once an interested vendor is awarded the pilot, test procedures must be established and the vendor’s equipment must be authenticated.   The test itself is scheduled to be done during a two-month period in the 2004 filing season and will involve about 85 FTEs (full time equivalent positions) worth of work.  NTEU has been assured that this pilot will have no impact on the current IRS staff or work flow.  Of course, depending on the results of the pilot, there could be a major impact on our work.  Accounts Management officials have told Chapter 49 in the past that there is so much accounts work to do, even if tax law were contracted to the private sector (and that’s a very big if) the Call Site staffs would at least remain the same.  But any contracting of tax law work would at the very least impact the mix of work available at Call Sites, and could more importantly impact the grade level of the work available and reduce opportunities for promotions at Call Sites.  As always, we at Chapter 49 promise to provide you any information available on this or any other efforts by IRS to explore the contracting out of work that we do.

Finally, you may recall that OMB has issued proposed regulations that would dramatically change the process of contracting out work we federal employees currently do.  The current process takes 4-5 years, and OMB wants to cut that down to 12 months.  OMB wants to assume any work is commercial rather than “inherently governmental,” meaning federal employees would have the burden of proof to show their jobs are inherently governmental and should not be contracted (the current process puts the burden on those wishing to contract).  NTEU has filed fierce objections to these and other changes OMB has proposed in changing the contracting process.  NTEU calls the proposed rule changes “reckless proposals.”  NTEU National President Colleen Kelley said, “The proposed revisions make it clear that the administration’s objective is to privatize, with or without competition, more than 850,000 federal jobs.”  President Kelley went on to say that the “administration has missed an opportunity to provide clarification, to ensure fairness, and demand accountability from contractors.”  It’s not just federal unions voicing opposition to these proposed rules.  Government Executive Magazine reports that at least 10 federal agencies have filed comments in opposition to these OMB proposed rules.  The magazine reports that the Small Business Administration (SBA) argues that the OMB proposed rules would hinder employee recruitment.  “The actual duration of ’permanent’ federal employment will become so uncertain that people may be reluctant to apply for government jobs,” SBA said in its written statement.  We will keep you posted on this.  The comment period on these rules will end soon, then it’s up to OMB to decide where this proposal is headed.


PAY & HEALTH INSURANCE  UPDATE

Your first paycheck in February will reflect a 3.1% pay raise, based on an executive order issued by President Bush in late December.  What happened to our 4.1% average wage hike for 2003?  It’s not dead, but it may be in some trouble.  Only the Defense Department has its appropriations signed into law for fiscal year 2003 (which began October 1, 2002).  The rest of the government is funded by yet another continuing resolution that authorizes continued spending at the previous year’s level through the end of January.  There are a number of Senators and members of the House pushing for a 4.1% pay raise in calendar year 2003.  We won’t know whether their efforts (with the help and support of NTEU) will be successful.  But we do know the 3.1% hike will be reflected in February paychecks, because that raise does not take affect until the first full pay period of calendar year 2003.  Whether a larger raise is possible this year won’t be known for sure until the Congress completes work on the current year spending plans. 

Meanwhile, the cost of health insurance is impacting the pocketbooks of all federal workers participating in the federal employee health insurance plan (FEHB).  NTEU National President Colleen Kelley testified before a congressional subcommittee last month in favor of a bipartisan bill to increase the current government contribution to health insurance premiums from the current average of 72% to 80%.  “To the extent federal employees are finding FEHB increasingly unaffordable, and prospective employees are discouraged from seeking employment as a result of the health program’s costs, this is an issue none of us can afford to ignore,” she told the congressional panel.  We hope the House Civil Service Committee will take up the bill sometime this year..

For the most up-to-date information, check out Chapter 49’s Web site at
www.nteu49.org

E-mail us at  nteu49@aol.com

Larry Lannnan