WaPo is reporting that IRS workers who were being called into work with no pay to process tax refunds are using a union contract provision to not work for the IRS with no pay, this could delay tax refunds "for months": https://www.washingtonpost.com/busi...9a09ff1e2a1_story.html?utm_term=.4ce3f66b9cf1
Hundreds of Internal Revenue Service employees have received permission to skip work during the partial government shutdown due to financial hardship, and union leaders said Tuesday that they expected absences to surge as part of a coordinated protest that could hamper the government's ability to process taxpayer refunds on time.
The Trump administration last week ordered at least 30,000 IRS workers back to their offices, where they have been working to process refunds without pay. It was one of the biggest steps the government has taken to mitigate the shutdown's impact on Americans' lives.
But IRS employees across the country — some in coordinated protest, others out of financial necessity — won't be clocking in, according to Tony Reardon, president of the National Treasury Employees Union, and several local union officials. The work action is widespread and includes employees from a processing center in Ogden, Utah, to the Brookhaven campus on New York's Long Island.
"They are definitely angry that they're not getting paid, and maybe some of them are angry enough to express their anger this way," said Reardon, whose union represents 150,000 employees at 33 federal agencies and departments. "But these employees live paycheck to paycheck, and they can't scrape up the dollars to get to work or pay for child care."
The employees summoned back from furlough to process tax refunds are paid between $25,800 and $51,000 a year, depending on their seniority. IRS employees will miss a second paycheck Monday if the government does not reopen this week.
"I'm at the point where I cannot afford to go to work," said Marissa Scott, 31, an IRS customer service representative who is out on hardship leave. Scott lives outside Kansas City, Mo., and drives 98 miles round trip to work each day. "I cannot afford to fill my gas tank."
Scott, who has worked at the IRS for four years, says she typically helps as many as 50 people a day with their returns during tax season, including U.S. troops stationed overseas. She said the shutdown could delay refunds for months, and without employees like her on the job, "it's going to be a disaster all around."
Many of the IRS employees who are choosing not to come to work despite getting called back are taking advantage of a provision in the union contract that allows them to miss work if they suffer a "hardship" during a shutdown, according to the labor groups.
That could mean a blown car tire, an empty gas tank or a child-care bill.
"I have fielded no less than 30 to 40 calls, emails or text messages about hardship requests from employees daily since Thursday," said Shannon Ellis, president of the NTEU's Chapter 66 in Kansas City.
In Andover, Mass., more than 100 customer service representatives, electronic filing workers and other IRS employees plan to use the hardship exemption and won't report to work, said Gary Karibian, chapter president of a local union.
"I would say a majority of employees are calling out under hardship," Karibian said. "I'm getting reports whole teams are requesting out. One person told me, 'I'm the only one on my team here.' "
The union lacks an official head count of absent workers — the IRS declined to share data on hardship exemptions — but staffers in Fresno, Calif.; Austin; Andover; Kansas City and Atlanta, among other locations, say they won't be showing up for work, Reardon said.
Duncan Giles, who has worked for 24 years at an IRS call center in Indianapolis, said more workers are requesting hardship leave as they learn it exists.
"The more this goes on and the tougher it is to get to work — they simply cannot afford it," said Giles, president of NTEU Chapter 49, noting that about 30 of the 170 employees who have been called back to work in Indianapolis have requested the exemption. "Every single person wants to be at work. They want to help the American taxpayer. But we have to pay for gas and child care."
The hardship exemption allows IRS employees not to have to use sick days to be absent from work, and managers must approve the exemptions.
Some front-line managers at the IRS have threatened their employees and said they could lose their jobs if they put in for the exemption, but Reardon, the union leader, said most have been instructed by senior management to approve the requests.
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