In a fresh escalation of President Donald Trump’s effort to exert more control over the federal workforce, the Treasury Department terminated collective bargaining agreements for unionized workers at the Internal Revenue Service and the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, according to The Associated Press and agency and union statements.
Workers at the IRS and at the Fiscal Service bureau, which processes payments for the government, are represented by the National Treasury Employees Union. Treasury leadership informed workers of the terminations, according to AP’s report, and Treasury cited a Trump executive order signed last March as the authority for ending the collective bargaining agreements.
IRS Chief Human Capital Officer Alex Kweskin told IRS employees in a letter dated Friday and viewed by AP that the move “deepens our commitment of operating as one IRS, a collaborative team focused on serving American taxpayers.” The AP report said the contract termination was part of a broader push to change how labor agreements function across parts of the federal workforce.
AP also reported that Treasury terminated the union contract for the Bureau of the Fiscal Service this week, citing two people familiar with the decision who spoke on condition of anonymity because they said they were not authorized to speak to the media. The AP report described the decision as coming in the same legal and administrative lane as the IRS termination.
The terminations follow a memo this month from Scott Kupor, director of the Office of Personnel Management, AP reported. The memo told agency heads to comply with Trump’s March order and notify labor unions, including unions represented by NTEU, “that they are terminating any applicable CBAs (collective bargaining agreements), whether represented by the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) or another labor union.”
The union’s legal challenge to the March order remains part of the surrounding context. AP reported that the union sued the federal government last year over the executive order, and that a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit issued a decision Thursday that cleared the way for implementation, while an earlier D.C. court preliminary injunction against the government was stayed pending an appeal.
In response to the termination, Doreen Greenwald, president of the Treasury employees union, said in a statement Friday that the IRS “cannot unilaterally end” its contract with the labor union. Greenwald said the federal sector labor statute requires the IRS to have a collective bargaining agreement with the exclusive representative of the bargaining unit employees, AP reported.
Greenwald’s statement also came as AP reported that NTEU represents roughly 150,000 employees across 37 departments and agencies, giving the termination a broad footprint within federal labor negotiations.