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WE DON'T NEED NO EDUCATION

March 08, 2005

The IRS employee union continues its battle for mediocrity in IRS today with a letter to Tax Analysts (unfortunately it is available only to subscribers; we are unable to find it on the NTEU website). The president of the National Treasury Employees Union, Colleen M. Kelley, is aghast at the IRS attempt to require new revenue agents to have 30 accounting credits at hire. The requirement has been 24. The union has won an arbitrator's ruling that the 30-hour requirement violates the union contract.

The letter has some choice bits:

Given that the pending actions are likely to generate an adverse public reaction from the IRS leaders, it is a good time to get a few actual facts to the public.

Yep, "actual" facts are better than that other kind.

After all, if this case is successful, it is likely to spark even more employee challenges to improper criteria used in hiring and promotion decisions and advance the public debate about how public employees should be hired.

Our war on qualifications has just begun!

Testifying on NTEU's behalf before the arbitrator were two current IRS employees who lack the extra accounting training but have been rated outstanding performers and were even selected to train new hires.

Well, if you could hire experienced revenue agents as new agents, that would make training less important, but that probably would be a contract violation.

Some of the best business schools in the country do not even require 30 credits of accounting for a degree. The University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business as well as the University of Virginia require only 18 semester hours, while Georgetown requires 21.

And Johns Hopkins Medical School requires no accounting at all!

Even the recruiting Web sites of the major accounting firms such as KPMG, Deloitte, and Ernst & Young call only for an accounting degree without any mention of the number of credit hours or specific courses needed.

Good luck getting an "actual" interview with one of these firms if you only have 24 accounting hours, unless you are looking for a job in the mail room.

It is impossible for a newly hired revenue agent from outside the IRS, no matter how many accounting courses under his or her belt, to walk into that position and be immediately successful. In contrast, internal hires - - in most cases with many years of experience in other IRS tax compliance jobs -- are far more ready to hit the ground running and be immediately successful and productive.

Like these IRS Service Center Employees (it looks like the "running" part is only a metaphor):

Cincinnati Enquirer Photo

Consequently, I can conclude only that the IRS imposed the additional requirements solely to serve as a bar to internal candidates, eliminating from consideration many highly qualified applicants for revenue agent positions and ignoring the significant value on-the-job experience offers. That in turn has had an inordinate impact on minorities and other protected classes

So six more accounting hours is pretty much the same thing as George Wallace standing at the schoolhouse door.

This dispute has nothing to do with increasing the professionalism of federal employees. NTEU will support any requirements that can be validated as essential to performance success. All we ask is that current employees be able to compete for IRS accounting positions under the same standards other federal agencies use. The IRS is still free to select candidates with more accounting hours or specific coursework.

Except they can't set their own minimum standards, of course.

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