WASHINGTON — The Treasury Department announced Friday that it has terminated its collective bargaining agreement with unionized workers employed by the Internal Revenue Service, an escalation of President Donald Trump’s push to exert more control over the federal workforce.
The Financial Service Bureau’s union contract was also terminated this week, according to two people familiar with the decision. The people spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
Workers at the IRS and the Bureau of Fiscal Services, which processes payments to the government, are represented by the National Union of Treasury Employees. The agency’s leadership informed them that the Treasury Department had terminated their collective bargaining agreements, using an executive order signed by President Donald Trump last March as the termination authority.
In a letter to IRS workers on Friday, seen by The Associated Press, Alex Kweskin, the IRS’s chief human resources officer, told employees that the move “deepens our commitment to serving as one IRS, a collaborative team focused on serving America’s taxpayers.”
The contract terminations come after Scott Kubor, director of the Office of Personnel Management, issued a memo this month to agency heads calling on them to comply with Trump’s March order and notify labor unions “that they are terminating any applicable collective agreements, whether represented by the National Treasury Employees Union or another labor union.”
The union filed a lawsuit against the federal government last year over Trump’s executive order.
While a D.C. court issued a preliminary injunction against the government, it has been put on hold pending appeal. Meanwhile, a three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit issued a decision in a separate case on Thursday that cleared the way for implementation of Trump’s executive order.
Doreen Greenwald, president of the Treasury Employees Union, said in a statement Friday that the IRS “cannot unilaterally terminate its contract with the labor union.” Federal labor law requires the IRS to have a collective bargaining agreement “with the exclusive employee representative of its bargaining unit,” she said.
The National Treasury Employees Union represents approximately 150,000 employees in 37 departments and agencies.
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Associated Press writer Jonathan J. Cooper contributed to this report.
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