VOICES: We are not OK.
On International Worker's Day, we stand with our union members and federal workers.
By Daniel Scharpenburg
Hello, I’m Daniel.
I am the 1st Vice President of National Treasury Employees Union Chapter 66. We represent the 6,000 IRS workers at the Kansas City IRS Campus. I am a union leader, and I am also a federal worker.
I want to let you know that we are not okay.
There has been an effort by the current administration to get us to leave the service. Our jobs have slowly, step-by-step, gotten less pleasant. Morale is at an all-time low.
Our union contract has been flagrantly violated several times. We have seen people get fired for no reason and we are now being threatened with a reduction in force.
“Reduction in force” is an effort to make something bad sound less bad. A job in the federal service used to be something that was a secure job, something that people could be proud of – a career. That stability has been pulled out from under us. We are being told our hard work and our dedication to the mission is inconsequential.
We are hearing rumors we could lose as many as 50% of our people. And that’s just at the IRS. And that’s just our agency alone. Agencies across the nation are facing cuts.
There are 30,000 federal workers in Kansas City. Cuts are happening at the VA, cuts are happening at Social Security, cuts are happening at the EPA. There’s a government agency that not a lot of people don't know about called the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) that helps people affected by predatory banks. They’re being cut by 90%.
An executive order was recently signed to dismantle our collective bargaining rights. This is Union busting and Union busting is not okay. Working people in this nation should be allowed to come together and bargain and fight for a better workplace. No president, no administration, no government should get in the way of the peoples’ right to associate in groups and help each other. Freedom of association matters.
There is a bill in the U.S. House of Representatives called HR 2550, the Protect America’s Workforce Act. This bill would codify union protections for federal workers. We are fighting the Union busting executive order in court, but if HR 2550 passed, it wouldn’t matter how the court ruled. We would have union rights, which is every worker’s right.
This is my request.
I am asking you to please call your congressional representative and ask them to sponsor HR 2550. If you live in Missouri’s 5th District and your representative is Emanuel Cleaver, you can just tell him thank you for co-sponsoring HR 2550.
Thank you for taking the time to read this. I love you all.
Please call your U.S. representatives in support of HR 2550. You can find them here. here.