The Brooklyn Dodger |
Vol. 25, No. 3 At the IRS - Quality is Job None Nov. 15, 2007 |
The Irving Award |
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 |
EDITORIALS |
RULES ARE FOR LITTLE PEOPLE |
It has been a while since we have presented an Irving Award, which is given to managers who go out of their way to make life difficult for employees outside his/her division in today's Post-Restructured/Dismantled IRS. The award is named for its first winner, now retired SB/SE manager Irving Abidor who was a pioneer in this art of annoying people outside of his operating division. Let us not forget that Irving also excelled at annoying people INSIDE his operating division, but we digress. The winner of the Irving Award is NY State Senior Commissioner's Rep Chris Palin. This presentation is different in a few ways. Past winners have won their awards by committing an action or series of actions. SCR Palin is being cited as a result of INACTION on his part. His non-handling of building issues in the Garden City office crossed divisional lines. In addition Palin had plenty of help in earning his honor. Special recognition should be given to Palin's Garden City staff that includes CR Robert Seda, AWSS Administrative Officer Vitamarie Baker and Support Service Specialist Annette Trusiak-Colatosti. Their collective inactivity and attitude helped make the presentation of the Irving Award to SCR Palin possible, necessary, and damn near unavoidable. Their heroics include the great February Freeze-Out, Brown Watergate, and 3-Copy Machine Monte as well as the constant presence of unescorted Non-IRS contract workers throughout building. The Great February Freeze-Out came about when a mass of Arctic air hit the NY area. Its effects were not limited to OUTSIDE the building. There were at least five instances where sections of the building did not have heat. Naturally, Palin's resident minions could not be found. We suspect they were off trying to keep warm themselves. When they did show up they harbored an attitude bordering on contempt for employees while offering no relief. When grievances werefiled on this issue CR Robert Seda displayed the lightning quick release of an NFL quarterback in passing them up to Palin. Palin tried a similar tactic but was thwarted by a combination of the NY area first level executives in both SB/SE and LMSB. It took nearly 2 weeks to get this problem fixed. Frostbite could set in before these clowns get their act together. A notice issued by the Town of Hempstead triggered the Brown Watergate episode. Employees in the Garden City office were notified via E-mail that the Town of Hempstead would be flushing the water mains in the area resulting in periods of discolored water conditions. The Union immediately requested bottled water be brought into Garden City. Faced with a similar situation in Hauppauge, CR, Mike Bernstein, had the landlord supply that office with bottled water. There is no evidence that Palin or anyone from his staff ever called the landlord to request bottled water. Palin, citing budgetary concerns refused to commit to supplying bottled water to the employees in the Garden City POD. Chapter 53 steward, Robert Wolfson met with Palin's predecessor Wynn Fitzpatrick over the issue of the water quality in the Garden City office. When told of this meeting Palin said he would like to consult with Mr. Wolfson on this matter. In sticking with his usual pattern of inaction and deceit, Palin made no effort to contact Wolfson. 3-Copy Machine Monte refers to the consistent outages of one or all of the Photostat machines on the 2nd floor. For a period of at least a month last summer at least one of the machines was not functioning. Employees were left to guess which copier (if any) was working on a given work day. Pressured by production demands and constant deadlines, these workers faced a no-win situation just as in the similarly named street game. This issue was constantly brought to the attention of the local CR who assured NTEU that Administrative Officer Vitamarie Baker was taking care of it. Perhaps the problem persisted for so long because Ms. Baker was so busy with her new job as Commissioner's Representative for Riverhead, an office with as many as 4 employees on its busiest day and which managed extremely well with no 'help' from AWSS for years. Once again, under normal circumstances, we wouldn't care if a case ever got closed. Tax administration is NOT our problem, it is the IRS' problem. However, we have an Alice-In-Wonderland management which thinks that if cases aren't closed because the copiers don't work it is somehow the employee's fault for not finding a way to make them work. At such point we do have to get involved to point out their lunacyand inaction, in Palin's case. The issue of Non-IRS personnel visiting a facility is of particular concern to the Union. Our members are constantly pounded with messages that security is their responsibility. Mission Assurance has said that if employees did not "challenge" Non-IRS persons in the building the employee could be disciplined. We are concerned with our members being held responsible for lost computers, tax returns or personal effects and potential disclosure violations. The IRM section on this topic states that " Non-IRS personnel visiting a facility and not on an access list will be issued Escort Only ID cards and must be escorted by a Service employee at all times. The Union was told that it was the job of Palin's Garden City staff to ensure that contractors working in Garden City were not left alone. When we observed contractors working in the office, unescorted, on a regular basis, we filed several grievances. The resolution of them included an overhaul to the entire process of escorting Non-IRS persons working in the Garden City. This new process was implemented in May of 2007 and promptly ignored by Palin's staff within a matter of days. The ignoring of the settlement led to more grievances. If YOU ignored a direct order from up above you could be assured insubordination charges would follow. We guess disregarding procedures is not a problem in Palin's world. The Union has been assured that this problem will not recur but empty promises are standard operating procedure with that group. We just want him to know that we'll be watching and that our word processor still works. NY State Senior Commissioner's Rep Chris Palin with the help of his staff easily iced the competition in winning the latest Irving award. The approach of December coupled with the reliability of the Garden City climate control system, leaves us to only hope our employees are not left freezing by this bunch yet again. Thanks for a great year, Chris. If the past is any guide to the future you stand an excellent chance of winning this award next year. The building is a disgrace and the disinterest of those who are supposed to oversee it virtually assures another cold winter. |
These out-the-door commentaries by retiring members are becoming more common it seems. This time, it is Revenue Officer, Art Bitterman, from Hauppauge. "I started at IRS as a temporary job until something better came along. I didn't know that I would be serving 30 years to life." A visiting retiree greeted an old comrade by saying: "How's Life?" He was told: "Life's great . . . the job sucks." |
The Anti-Money Laundering (AML) program was started some five years ago and resides in its own little empire within SB/SE outside of the mainstream examination program and with its own hierarchy of executives. This isolation has enabled local AML management, namely Territory Manager Peter Gorga, Acting AML group manager Julie Silva and former AML group manager John Post to behave in an extremely bizarre and arrogant manner. They try to intimidate anyone who asserts their basic statutory rights and deliberately violate provisions of the National Labor Agreement which does not fit their immediate whims. Silva routinely committed unfair labor practices by receipting grievances and refusing to schedule grievance meetings. Gorga and the acting AML Area Director Sandra Stolt blindly support the actions of the first line managers and we suspect even encourages this type of behavior. We had a case in which Silva wrote up an employee for being "too careful" with Taxpayer Information. Prior to Silva's brain cramp the group locator sheets were kept in a cabinet drawer in the secretary's workstation. They were not readily accessible to someone who wandered into the AML group area. Silva ordered the locators to be left out in an open area where they could be easily opened and read by anyone including on-site building maintenance contractors or other non-AML group persons who wandered in. The Secretary involved rightly feared that if the locators were moved to the location Silva wanted the employee could be written up for a disclosure violation. She left them in the cabinet and was written up for failure to follow managerial directives even though the managerial directive was to ignore disclosure provisions. This is not the way to handle the situation, though. Far better to simply follow the instruction and come to NTEU. We'll file a grievance, creating a paper trail which makes it clear that the idea was the manager's not the employee's. Insubordination is a whole different animal when it comes to the case law. Naturally Chapter 53 filed a grievance claiming that the employee was being disciplined for failure to follow an UNLAWFUL order. Article 5 Section 14 of the contract gives employees protection from disciplinary actions if they fail to follow an UNLAWFUL order. The responses we got from various management officials contained so much double talk, contradictions and "I don't recalls" that it reminded us of the Iran-Contra hearings. Silva's reply, which was no doubt ghost written by LR, contained the following comment: " The Disclosure Office advised management that since the binder does not contain taxpayer data [i.e., ein/ssn's] that no disclosure of information has occurred, especially since the book is locked up at the close of business. I have determined that the National Agreement was not violated...." We found it incredible that any Disclosure Officer would make such a statement. Of course AML management wouldn't lie about consulting with a Disclosure Officer... WOULD THEY? Chief Steward, Mike O'Grady decided to find out. The grievance response did not say which of the 15 Disclosure Offices gave such advice. Mike e-mailed all fifteen quoting Silva's response and requesting guidance from the IRS Disclosure Office regarding this situation. For good measure the upper management of AML and the acting Commissioner of SB/SE were sent a copy. Barbara Rodriguez, Disclosure Manager Office 11 wrote back "The document should be kept secure. It could be kept on the Secretary or receptionist desk and then locked at night, but even during the day it should be kept secure and leaving it on a table in the group area where the maintenance workers have access would not be secure." Sharon King, a Disclosure Manager from Philadelphia, wrote on 8/20/07 "If the manager already checked with Disclosure Management, please find out who they spoke to and discuss it with them. There is no need to involve another disclosure manager when you can speak to the one who provided the guidance. I am not familiar with "employee locators" but from your email, you indicate that the names of the taxpayers are the case names therefore protected by IRC 6103. Also, IRM 1.16.14.2 gives guidance on the clean desk policy for management. I hope this information is helpful." King's response is significant as you will soon learn. O'Grady replied that the information was helpful and the reason all 15 Disclosure Offices were contacted was that Silva refused to provide NTEU with the name of the Disclosure person whose advice she relied upon in preparing her grievance response. The inquiry apparently came to the attention of someone in the Commissioner's office because shortly after sending his e-mail, Mike received a call from Len Smigelski, a Tax Specialist who reports directly to the National Director of the Disclosure Office. Smigelski opened the conversation by remarking that his life was made difficult that morning because he had to answer a number of questions from the Commissioner's office that arose from Mike's original e-mail. A surprisingly pleasant phone conversation ensued at the end of which Mr. Smigelski said he needed to look further into the matter. Mr. Smigelski wrote back "In response to your email, a taxpayer's name listed in conjunction with a tax case, such as would appear on a locator sheet, is return information, subject to the confidentiality provisions of IRC 6103. You are correct that access to tax information requires both a statutory basis for access, as well as a need to know the information." We knew that all along but it was nice to see it in writing from someone who knew his stuff, as opposed to some L/R hack. There is a bizarre twist to this sordid scenario. On 8/30/07 during a grievance meeting Peter Gorga identified Sharon King as the Disclosure Officer who gave the advice cited in the Step 1 response. An E-mail was sent to her the same day asking her if she recalled giving Ms. Silva or any other AML management official such advice. Ms. King wrote back "No, I don't recall this matter. The blind copy email was the first I heard of it, in which a response was provided on 8/27/2007 to you by Headquarters Disclosure." King's response was forwarded to Gorga with a comment that it appears someone is giving the Union inaccurate information. Gorga replied "I am sorry that Ms King does not recall this conversation; however, to the best of my recollection it occurred on Monday, August 20 at approximately noon; therefore, you were not given inaccurate information." Gorga's response was then forwarded to Sharon King who on 9/4/07 wrote "No comment. I don't remember, but if he's pretty sure it was me, then it happened. What's next??????" Obviously, Mike was not the only one who could send out an e-mail! Well, Ms. King, we guess what's next is that we will expose you and all the other management officials involved in this mess as the phonies that you are in our nationally circulated newsletter. It is amazing what lengths management will go to cover up for themselves. To paraphrase the late Leona Helmsley - Honesty, Ethics and Integrity are principles that apply only to the little people (the Bargaining Unit). In our opinion BU employees would not get this type of protection and consideration. Workers are subject to the "Shoot first ask questions later (maybe)" approach. We can only guess the rule is IT IS NOT A DISCLOSURE VIOLATION IF A MANAGER COMMITS IT |
ANTI-LABOR RELATIONS |
There is a well-known scientific principle that says "nature abhors a vacuum." Restated simply this means if there is a void or empty space something, or someone, will fill it. This same concept can be applied to the post-restructuring IRS. Prior to the great IRS Restructuring/Dismantling of 2000 there was a District Director who could make a final decision on any and all employee matters within their geographic area. There were none of these petty and often nonsensical inter-divisional disputes as eventually all parties involved reported to this central authority. Ultimately, there was a final decision made by the Director that all parties were obligated to comply with. You would have never had a situation like we do now with an Accounts Receivable clerk ignoring an Area Manager. There was none of this "I can ignore you because you have no line authority over me" that is all too prevalent in today's IRS. There is another scientific theory that after a cataclysmic event such as a nuclear blast only the simplest and lowest forms of life will survive. Out of the morass of this fractured post-2000 IRS has oozed the Labor Relations staff to fill the void left by the absence of a single authority figure in a given geographical area. Science also tells us that cockroaches have survived for 350 million years so Labor Relations is in good company...for them. Based on our observations and discussions with numerous other NTEU Chapters, Labor Relations has taken control of employee matters within the IRS. This is definitely putting the fox in charge of the hen house. We have also found LR to have an antagonistic, uncaring and unsympathetic attitude towards employees. Their policy could be summarized as Maximum Punishment/ Minimal Benefits for IRS employees. Their "Off with their Heads" mentality is painfully evident based on their insistence that there must be discipline for even the smallest of errors. In the eyes of LR, lowering of an appraisal (whether it be a progress review or an annual) no matter how arbitrary is justified. Retaliation by a manager against an employee does not exist unless the employee's ANNUAL APPRAISAL is lowered. Theoretically, according to their definition of retaliation if an employee questioned a manager, the manager could constantly make the employee's work life a living hell as long as the ANNUAL APPRAISAL is not lowered. Most managers do not get a free pass in this mess. With a few exceptions they have allowed the Labor Relations specialists to take control of the grievance process. LR Specialists are supposed to serve as an advisor to management. Instead most managers simply allow LR to make decisions for them and blindly sign the responses that LR has prepared for them. Using the Weasel Approach, which must be taught in management class, they then look at you and say (whining) "what can I do, Labor Relations is insisting that I sign the response they prepared for me... I can't think for myself." It's an easy out for gutless managers but we don't buy it. The LR staffer assigned to Chapter 53 is Christine Forrest. This is the same individual who arbitrarily determined that she would not allow any Chapter 53 SB/SE grievance to be heard until the chapter provesto her, in advance, that the grievant had been "harmed." Since "harm" is a concept which should not be left to the discretion of the oppressor, we refused her order and took it a big step further. Her presumptuous attempt to create new hurdles for bargaining unit employees to jump through caused Chapter 53 president George Greenberg to write to the area director that neither he nor any Chapter 53 stewards will be engaging in conversations with Ms. Forrest other than to schedule appointments. If management wants Forrest in the process....mucking it up at every step....that is their decision. The contract does not indicate that we have to deal with her or any other L/R slug at all. We hold management responsible, not their lackeys. We would like to see Labor Relations banned from the grievance process. Better yet, eliminate the Labor Relations staff entirely! Yes, let managers, who regularly and directly interact with employees make the decisions that will affect their employee's daily work lives! Let those managers, who will directly observe the impact of their decisions on the employees interpret the contract and determine what should be done, not some flunkey in a remote location who under the best of circumstances has no clue what is going on in the real world. The issue arises of what to do with these displaced LR employees. We have discussed a number of alternatives, but most of them are unprintable. However, we are Union people and we don't like it when people lose their jobs. The IRS is always complaining that they need to beef up staff but do not get the funding for it. How about training these displaced employees to go into the field and collect money from taxpayers like the RO's or do audits like the RA's. They could be trained to work the counter in the understaffed W&I walk-in centers. At the very least they would experience what those same IRS employees that they are so quick to condemn do on a daily basis, and managers would have a whole new group of inept employees to bitch about. |
