The Brooklyn Dodger |
Vol. 26, No. 1 At the IRS - Quality is Job None Apr. 30, 2008 |
OUTRAGE! |
The Brooklyn Dodger |
Published by NTEU Chapter 53 George Greenberg President Bob Schillaci Editor 107 Charles Lindbergh Blvd. 1180 Veterans Highway Garden City, NY 11530 Hauppauge, NY 11788 516 683-5679 631-851-4965 |
EMPLOYEE WISECRACKS |
Bushwhacked...Junior |
LIABILITY Dramatis Personae Dennis ............................... An IRS Group Manager Bill ................................... An Agent in his group Pat ................................... An NTEU Steward Connie.............................. Group Secretary Act 1. Dennis is in his office. Bill and Pat enter. Bill: You wanted to see me, boss? Dennis: Yeah....I have some questions about your travel voucher. Maybe you could clear this up for me? Bill: I'll give it a shot. Dennis: Good. Now this charge for $59.95 is for a lap top battery? Bill: My battery caught fire. Dennis: Why didn't MITS give you a new one? Bill: MITS said that their batteries don't catch fire. Dennis: But....it did. Pat: They refuse to admit that. Dennis: But you took pictures! Pat: They said they couldn't read the serial number because of the fire damage so they can't verify that it was an IRS battery. Dennis: Let's come back to that. Now this charge for $79.95 is for... Bill: When the battery caught fire it burned the carrying case. I have the receipts. Dennis: I'm seeing where this is going. So, this next charge for $1,150.00 is Bill: is..when the battery burned the case, the case burned my lap top. Dennis: Just for the sake of argument let's accept that and move on to this claim for $22,500.00? Bill: When the battery burned the case and the computer it happened to be in the trunk of my car, a 2007 Toyota Prius. I have the invoice. Dennis: Weren't you insured? Bill: Yes, but the car insurance company claims that because the car was in the garage when the fire started that they aren't liable...my homeowner's insurance company is. Dennis: Aha! So THAT is the explanation for this next charge of $537,989.00? Bill: Yes. My house burned to the ground so that represents the total outlay of the insurance company for the fire. Dennis: But, they paid your claim, right? Bill: Absolutely. Dennis: Then I do not understand why you are putting all this on your travel voucher. You must know that I don't have the authority to approve this? Pat: They don't expect you to approve it. He just had to exhaust "administrative remedies" so the insurance company can sue you and the government to recover their costs because you caused the fire. In fact, if you would just be kind enough to write "denied" on the voucher, we're done. Dennis: Sued? For what? Bill: You insisted that I take that damned computer out into the field. You wrote it right in my last review. Dennis: Errrrrr... Let me think this over and get back to you. Pat: Okay but don't take too long. The insurance company is eager to file suit. (Bill and Pat exit. Dennis calls out to his secretary.) Dennis: Connie!!! Get that idiot from Labor Relations on the phone for me. (Connie answers from offstage:) Connie: You'll have to be more specific. Which idiot? Dennis: Doesn't matter...they're all alike. (Phone rings:) Dennis: Hello? Yes. I'll tell you what the problem is. One of my agents' laptops caught fire and it burned down his house and now I've been handed a $550,000 travel voucher.........What do you mean 'Sign it?' There isn't that much money in the whole budget. Yes. I don't think you understand. They don't expect me to sign it. They just want me to deny it so they can sue me and the government for causing the fire! Of course I didn't start the fire. All I did was tell him to take his computer out into the field. How the hell was I supposed to know that the battery could ignite? Yes, I did see the story about the Lenovo battery recall, so what? Yes. I did put it in writing that he take the computer home....it was in his review. They have to use the computer for everything...you know that. Oh. Well...you know it now! Yes, I told you, I did tell him to take it home. You know...if he had left it here when it caught fire it would have burned down the whole office! Yes. Yes. I realize we are insured for that. No, I don't think that would have been a better outcome. What the hell do you mean 'they have an open and shut case?' Whose side are you on? Who is going to defend me? ....IRS counsel? Thanks for nothing, buddy. I'll get my own lawyer. Yeah....screw you, too.(Hangs up.) (Intercom buzzes and Connie says:) Dennis? There is a process server here to see you... |
EDITORIALS |
Sooner or later union officials start to feel as if we have seen the worst that IRS management can do and that they couldn't possibly get any worse. We are starting to realize that at such times we should delegate one of you to smack us in the head. IRS apparently has a contest to see which manager can be the biggest son-of-a-bitch. We're going to tell you about this year's winners. Don't tell us that it is only April and the year is young. These guys are the winners. When you read the story, you'll agree. This is a story about two CID managers whose outrageous and callous behavior warrants everyone's attention. Now, while it is true that we don't have a lot of activity with CID you should not think that LMSB or SBSE is superior. They are all just as bad because it is the management culture of the IRS which is to blame...not some arbitrary gaggle of initials which they have thrown together as 'operating divisions." The employee involved is an investigative analyst working in "The Lead Development Center." That group's purpose is irrelevant for this story. What is relevant is the fact that two CID managers have discriminated against this employee because of one factor, she is a victim of breast cancer. Her treatment causes her to be absent while undergoing chemotherapy. Obviously, this impacts her performance. Unfortunately for the two bozos we are going to tell you about, the law (The Americans With Disabilities Act) understands this fact and protects cancer patients. What concerns us is that apparently CID's management training is so inept that it does not include even a basic understanding of this law. Perhaps CID thinks that laws only apply to "little people?" The employee has worked for IRS for twenty-eight years with 22 of those years in CID. It isn't as if they don't know her. Her evaluations have been excellent. She has received letters of commendation for her work from various persons in the Treasury Department. Excerpt from Employee Appraisal "While she is performing a valuable service for us, she is not performing the complex duties of an investigative analyst. As a result of this and her medical circumstances the only reasonable rating for this period is fully successful." Signed by both Burton and Perry... Chapter 53 has a copy, of course After being diagnosed with cancer she had to endure four operations, chemotherapy and radiation treatments. The side effects of the treatments still linger. She contacted Chapter 53 President, George Greenberg, for help because she never thought that it would be more difficult dealing with the stress imposed by management than the daily stress of having a disease that has killed so many women. George decided the case was so egregious that he assigned Robert Wolfson, a former EEO investigator himself, to take the lead with Mike O'Grady assisting. The two managers who have spared no effort to make her work days miserable are Corey Burton and David Perry. The medical treatments required have caused fluid to build up in her legs making driving difficult. She informally requested and obtained reasonable accommodation to allow her to work closer to home in July 2006. To make the procedure formal she applied for official accommodation on IRS Form 13661. For some reason, this was not good enough for Burton. He destroyed the official IRS form and concocted his own long-winded questionnaire claiming that "Human Resources" required it. It asked many personal questions that he was entitled to know, it was not on IRS letterhead stationery nor did it have a form number from OPM.. We believe this control freak made up his own form to delve into the personal life of one of his employees. So much for medical privacy. Burton next regularly harassed the employee and told her she had to step up the pace of her productivity. He broke into her desk and had her possessions removed claiming she was taking up "prime real estate in Garden City." He could not claim he needed it for new employees because there were several vacant desks. Meanwhile Burton continually asked for the answers to his form and stated that Helena Phillip of Human Resources was calling weekly for the questionnaire. The employee then called Helena Phillip in March of 2007. Phillip told the employee that she knew nothing about any questionnaire and had never called Burton about the matter. It seems clear to us that Burton had lied about the whole thing. Let us not forget that Burton could not get his well-deserved reputation as an abuser of female employees if he did not have the permission and assistance of one man: his superior, David Perry. Burton, under Perry's direction now pushed for the employee's return to Garden City as punishment for her finding out that these two CID managers devised a false story. Wolfson's recommended an EEO complaint be filed naming Burton and Perry as the discriminating officials. Perry retaliated immediately ordering the employee to Garden City by February 5, 2008 or a notice to terminate her employment would be issued that day. Bob Wolfson took the notice to the EEO Counselor who promptly ripped into Perry who then caved in like your average school-yard bully and rescinded the order. The employee has been returned to Hauppauge and we have every belief that the reasonable accommodation will be granted. Due to a reorganization this employee no longer reports to Burton (who says the IRS never catches on). Wolfson has put the employee in touch with the Breast Cancer Coalition and she has retained an attorney who will proceed with this case. For all the years we have been in the business of representing employees we continue to be amazed that characters such as Burton and Perry rise to the level of managers. We just can't shake the feeling that these two could not have operated for this long in a vacuum. That means that their superiors knew and approved of their actions or, at the very least, took no steps to rein them in. "Qui tacet consentire videtur" or "Silence means consent" seems like a solid legal maxim to us, although we have no doubt that when the law suit reaches the serious stage they will imitate the "see no evil, hear no evil, say no evil" monkeys. IRS managers all have the same act. |
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Overheard at one of those interminable "Town Meetings" that the IRS loves so much. "The organization is being run by ANAL-ysts." GUEST COMMENTS I just finished the latest issue of the "Dodger" and as always you folks never cease to outdo yourselves. The one article that stands out is the article about that meddling and useless agency function we have come to know as Labor Relations or as you so aptly term "Anti Labor Relations." Your analysis is dead on as it pertains to LR being the single most intrusive impediment to settling labor/management issues informally... Mike Royster, President ` Chapter #271 Brooklyn Thank you for another great issue of the Dodger! Although the names are different, the issues faced by your Chapter occur here also. The LR people we deal with have the brains of pond scum and the social graces of Karl Rove! Lauri Goff, President Chapter #45, Oklahoma City HERE WE GO AGAIN On March 14 an e-mail was circulated from Linda Stiff, at that time the Acting Grand High Exalted Mystic Ruler of Something or Other . . . these management types invent titles for themselves in a manner akin to medieval potentates. In the e-mail, Stiff pronounced herself happy to announce that one Douglas Shulman had been named Commissioner of the IRS. She'll forgive us if we don't have the same level of enthusiasm. Stiff comments: "Doug comes to the IRS with a wide range of experience in business, public policy and securities regulation. He currently serves as Vice Chairman of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. Earlier in his career, he served as Vice President of Darby Overseas Investments. In addition to his extensive private sector experience, Doug also served as Senior Policy Advisor and Chief of Staff of the bipartisan National Commission on Restructuring the Internal Revenue Service in the 1990s." A reasonable translation of that is that he is yet one more in a line of commissioners who don't have any clue how the IRS functions. Like the preceding disasters, Rossotti and Everson, he comes from the private sector with no idea of what makes the government different from the private sector. Until he proves otherwise we will assume that he is just another political appointee seeking to advance the goals of the Bush administration. We surely do not expect him to prove otherwise. Normally, we wouldn't even bother addressing some of the comments made in Shulman's First Message to IRS Employees. Without looking we imagine that it is fairly indistinguishable from the First Messages of earlier Commissioners. ["I'm honored to be here...yada, yada, yada] you've seen it all before and so have we. Two lines in his message did catch our attention. First, "Your efforts show once again that the IRS has a talented, dedicated workforce that gets the job done." Naturally we agree with that but we must ask Shulman if that means that he will call off his management dogs who drive those talented and dedicated workers out of their ever-loving minds with their constant interference in case work? Somehow, we don't think Shulman's concern will stretch quite that far. Talk is cheap and IRS management has plenty of that to go around. The second comment he made was: "In the coming months you will hear more from me about priorities, strategy and direction." Mr. Commissioner, the last thing that any IRS employee needs to hear about is more priorities. The flock of Yes-Men (and Women) surrounding you will never tell you, and they'll make sure you never see this editorial, but those talented and dedicated employees you referenced earlier are being driven to distraction because in the IRS EVERYTHING IS ALREADY A PRIORITY. So, on the off chance that you aren't a total phony like your predecessors and you really would like to do something to reward those talented and dedicated employees find a way to make some of those priorities vanish because when "everything" is a priority then nothing is a "priority." We won't, however, be holding our breath in anticipation. COURT VICTORY (For Now) National President, Colleen Kelley, announced on 4-7 that NTEU had won a decision in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals which ordered IRS to provide back pay to workers in Washington state who spent extra commuting time to report to temporary duty stations. The bad part of this is that the case began in 1998. In 2000 an arbitrator ruled in NTEU's favor and NTEU has been trying to get the IRS to comply with the ruling ever since. On the one hand we certainly applaud National NTEU's legal team for the determined prosecution of the case but on the other there is a saying that "justice delayed is justice denied" and ten years is a long time. Besides, what is to stop the IRS from appealing to that wholly owned subsidiary of the Bush Administration known as The Supreme Court? |
Editor's Note: Some photos of a burned computer and battery on the web recently stirred our imagination (always dangerous) about the ramifications of government reliance, dare we even say 'demand' of computer usage. It triggered this little one act play. Unlike in the print edition, our online version allows us to post the pictures. |
CHAPTER ELECTION NOTICE The Chairman of the Chapter 53 election committee, Jack Israel, has asked us to begin the process with the publication of this announcement. As always it will be a mail-ballot election and it is anticipated that you should receive the first mailing from the committee some time in May. The actual date is determined by our receipt from National NTEU of the official mailing labels for our membership. It is thus of primary importance that you take steps to assure that your address is correct on the database of the National Office. A simple means of knowing this is if you regularly receive the National Bulletin and other mailings from NTEU. If you have not received such correspondence please visit the chapter offices in Garden City or Hauppauge and give us your correct address so that we may make the necessary corrections to the database. If visiting the offices is difficult please call Garden City at 516-683-5679 or Hauppauge at 631-851-4965. Time is of the essence on this so please do not delay if you have an address to correct. The vote you save will be your own. |
Excerpt from the Threat Letter Therefore, you are hereby notified that if you do not return to work at your assigned POD it may be necessary to propose terminating you from the Service." From David Perry's letter of 1-28-08 |
