Taxing Victories

The good news for Internal Revenue Service employees this summer is that two groups of workers won competitions against private firms to keep agency operations from being contracted out. The bad news is that in both instances, the employee teams had to agree to eliminate jobs.

First, employees

won a contest involving 550 full-time equivalent positions at the agency's three distribution centers, which fill orders for IRS publications and maintain a stock of the agency's products. But to do so, they submitted a plan to close centers in Richmond, Va., and Rancho Cordova, Calif., and to eliminate jobs in Bloomington, 111. The decision will result in a total loss of about 270 workers.

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TRADE-OFF IRS sacrifices jobs to win work.

The in-house team found that the need for 1RS paper products is decreasing significantly, says Raymona Stickell, director of the agency's Office of Competitive Sourcing. Work is expected to decline at a rate of 6 percent a year, she says, as citizens pull documents from the Internet and rely more on computer software packages.

In the second contest, employees with IRS' Modernization and Information Technology Services won a competition for 278 technology positions at 10 offices across the country. But to maintain an edge over private sector bidders, the inhouse workers proposed cuts of 218 jobs.

Currently, 19 to 36 technology employees work at each of the 10 offices. Under the in-house plan, the 1RS will reduce the IT workforce to five per location. The other 10 employees staying on board will work on quality control and program management.