IRS Employees Stage Protest in South Austin

A handful of IRS workers in South Austin tried to stage a protest yesterday, but were shooed away by Homeland Security officers.

The disgruntled employees, all members of the National Treasury Employees Union, were outraged after being denied vacation time on Tuesday in order to extend their Memorial Day holiday weekends.

From KLBJ:

"You can't take leave to be with your dying father. You're not taking care of him, therefore we have no obligation to let you go. They charged him AWOL," Dorothy Pistole said, explaining a situation which she said happened to a colleague. KLBJ asked Pistole if the employees group has any fears of retaliation.
"We can use this as a marker to say, at this point, management didn't have any problem with what the employee has done. But all the sudden now management is treating the employees differently? Then we have a point when we can start looking at a retaliation grievance."

"It's very important. The holiday is all about service to America. A lot of them, they were in the military. A lot of them have military families now," Union President Ed Walker says. "They denied all of this leave before the Economic Stimulus Program came out, so if they began using that as an excuse, they would not be telling the truth."

Check out the video coverage here.

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By Allen Y Chen in News on May 28, 2008 3:21 PM 0 Comments

Comments [rss]

taxman

Forcing families of four who make less than thirty grand a year to pay the same rate of tax as single millionares with no dependents is not funding the government fairly. History also proves that massive layoffs and job eliminations lead to recessions, depresions and worse. Lets lay off the armed forces, while we're at it, we certainly won't be able to pay them. Without a department of the government to effectively oversee and enforce tax laws, the tax gap widens. Just look at the Texas comptroller's office, before Bob Bullock took over.

ducknutz

History proves that unemployed workers always find work again. I'd rather give the IRS a pink slip and fund the government fairly then hang on to an old decrepit tax code that doesn't work.

taxman

"I wish we could pass the Fair Tax and give the IRS a permanent vacation."

Yes thrusting more than 5,000 local employees into unemployment would be far better. The tax system isn't perfect, but the funny thing about ideas titled as "fair" is that they seldom are.

On topic, If you were denied leave to be with your dying father, this is paid medical or personal time you've accrued (read: earned), what would your reaction be to "get back to work, ya bums".

Irs employees are people too. Hard working people, smart people, pubic servants, actually. It may be an unpopular public service, but it is a necessary one. Collecting tax funds a lot of great programs. It also funds a lot of bad programs, but if you've gt a problem with where your tax dollars go, take it out on congress, not the Irs.

Don't hate the player, hate the game.

Joel Nihlean

I worked for the IRS as a seasonal employee in the ITIN department which takes care of approving "temporary" social security numbers for foreign residents of the US. We were over-worked, under-paid, under-trained and stuck in creepy cold cave like rooms. Managment was also under-trained often highly unqualified. Plus, the building is built like a prison. I can see why government employees are often bitter, unbalanced people. Working there was hell. So I feel for these people. They deserve to throw a stink because their job just sucks.

ducknutz

I wish we could pass the Fair Tax and give the IRS a permanent vacation.

LoudMouth

So why is the IRS denying anyone vacation time? What the hell do they have to do anyway? They're government employees, they probably sit around and smell each other's coffee induced farts for the majoirty of their day.