IRS agrees to stop stealing workers’ pro-union decorations

The Internal Revenue Service has agreed to cease policing employee workstations and communal spaces for union paraphernalia, in an apparent victory for the National Treasury Employees Union, who sued to stop the practice earlier this month.

Last month, IRS leadership issued a directive to its Facilities Management and Security Services personnel instructing them to confiscate NTEU-related materials from agency facilities using “whatever steps are necessary” short of vandalizing non-union property, purportedly to conform with President Trump’s executive order banning collective bargaining at the agency. Since then, the union has collected multiple reports of the agency taking NTEU-blazoned materials out of employees cubicles and literally papering over communal bulletin boards with union literature and decorations.

NTEU filed a lawsuit earlier this month seeking a preliminary injunction to stop the practice, contending that the directive and the agency’s subsequent enforcement actions amount to a violation of union members’ First Amendment rights.

But according to a stipulation filed to the U.S. District Court for Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, IRS officials have agreed to halt its campaign, at least for now. The document, submitted jointly by the agency and NTEU, states that management would “pause further implementation” of its directive and that employees may resume displaying union materials both at their desks and in common areas.

The agency also agreed to return any NTEU materials that it had previously confiscated, provided that they were not already thrown out, destroyed or otherwise lost. Under the deal, NTEU’s lawsuit would be held open, albeit in abeyance. If IRS moves to re-implement its directive, it would be required to give the union five days’ notice, giving labor leaders a chance to renew its request for an injunction.

In a statement Tuesday, NTEU National President Doreen Greenwald said the agency’s swift retraction of its anti-NTEU order indicates that it “plainly” violated union members’ free speech rights.

“Now, after NTEU’s motion for a preliminary injunction and a subsequent conference before a federal district court, the IRS has agreed to halt its illegal actions,” she said. “It has likewise agreed that IRS employees can once again proudly display NTEU materials in common spaces and at their workstations and that it will return the NTEU materials that it brazenly confiscated from employees . . . This victory achieves what NTEU would have gotten through its motion for emergency relief. And it shows, more broadly, that NTEU will do whatever it takes to defend its members’ rights.”