With stimulus checks and mounting piles of paperwork not opened?
The agency has moved to ask its workers to return….
The agency had told staff to take time off due to the virus emergency…
And the real is for volunteers right now…Offering incentive pay…
If that doesn’t work?
The agency may order people back to work…
The agency is telling staff to bring their own masks and gloves…
Tony Reardon, who heads the National Treasury Employees Union, said separately that the “initial wave” will include about 10,000 employees at 10 locations who will be “opening taxpayer correspondence, handling tax documents, taking taxpayer telephone calls and performing other functions related to the filing season.”
The IRS shuttered all of its processing and taxpayer assistance centers in recent weeks to shield its workforce from exposure to the coronavirus, and thousands of its employees have been teleworking. But it is now scrambling to get economic stimulus payments to millions of Americans and to implement other key elements of the economic rescue package enacted last month.
The agency is asking for volunteers and offering incentive pay, Reardon said in a statement, but will order employees back if there are not enough volunteers.
“We are communicating with the IRS about working conditions at those facilities to make sure there are adequate cleaning and disinfecting supplies, accommodations to allow for physical distancing among employees and personal protective equipment, including masks and gloves,” Reardon said….
Update…
IRS employees voluntarily returning to work this week are being given disposable face masks, and the agency is taking other precautions as it attempts to return to more normal service levels, said two organizations representing workers and managers.
IRS officials told the National Treasury Employees Union the agency “had obtained quantities of disposable masks for each location so any employee without a mask was provided one by the agency,”…
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