We all want to be that employee who is important to our company’s operation.
Until, that is, we want to leave and the boss says, “no, we can’t afford to lose you.”
That’s what happened to some Internal Revenue Service personnel.
While most attention recently has been on federal staff who were fired and upset about losing their government jobs, around 2,100 IRS workers who wanted out have been told they can’t take the latest deferred resignation offer.
The Treasury Deferred Resignation Program, or TDRP, would place federal workers on administrative leave through Sept. 30. The program is one of the Trump administration’s options to reduce Uncle Sam’s workforce.
Critical workers must stay: Roughly 20,000 IRS employees applied for TDRP. But Treasury’s Chief Tax Compliance Office leadership identified key positions crucial to the agency, and told those employees via email last week that they aren’t eligible for the resignation offer, Bloomberg Tax reported.
The deadline for workers to take the offer was April 14, noted Bloomberg. Those whose TDRP request was granted could leave the IRS as soon as April 28.
Those who were denied, however, must stay on the job.
The email, the text of which CPA Practice Advisor posted, told the affected IRS employees that “these key positions will be re-assessed in the future and, if circumstances change that permit your participation in TDRP, we will notify you.”
The CPA Practice Advisor piece also noted that probationary employees, who have been on paid administrative leave since March, have been asked to come back to work if their job is deemed critical. The email says —
“You have been identified as a probationary employee in a key IRS service, enforcement or operations support area who is being recalled to full duty status. Next week, you will receive instructions on obtaining a PIV [Personal Identity Verification] Card and IT equipment, workspace assignments and temporary telework where space is not available, in addition to information on outside employment.”
Work now, but worried: The IRS flip-flop has made some recalled employees apprehensive. Many of these probationary workers, who have fewer job protections, are concerned that while the IRS wants them back now, it will lay them off as part of the White House’s mandated reduction in force (RIF) plans later this year.
“Our positions are ‘critical’ now but weren’t ‘critical’ back when they illegally fired us in February? How convenient for them,” an IRS probationary worker told the accounting and tax professionals publication.
Another probationary staffer wrote on Reddit, “I know at least some of the [probationary workers] in my group have already found new jobs. Absolute insanity to fire them all, close most of their cases, and then bring them back on.”
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