Workers at the IRS office in Covington, one of the city’s largest employers, have begun receiving Reduction in Force, or RIF, notices due to work furloughs resulting from the federal government shutdown that began on Oct. 1.
The IRS employed about 2,600 people out of its Covington office as of June 30, 2024, the last day of the 2024 fiscal year, according to the city’s annual financial report, making it second only to Fidelity in terms of number of employees.
As LINK nky reported in June, the office was already undergoing job cuts, which could prove problematic for the city’s payroll tax revenue, in addition to the effects the cuts have on the lives of the workers themselves.
Congress must vote each fiscal year to fund government operations, and the shutdown arises from disagreements over government spending, particularly concerning healthcare subsidies and foreign aid. Voting in Congress leading up to the shutdown was deadlocked, often along partisan lines, as dueling partisan funding plans all failed to pass by the Sept. 30 deadline.
Democratic lawmakers in Congress are demanding that any deal to reopen the federal government address their health care demands. Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson predicted the shutdown may become the longest in history, saying he “won’t negotiate” with Democrats until they hit pause on those demands and reopen.
Democrats have demanded that health care subsidies, first put in place in 2021 and extended a year later, be extended again. They also want any government funding bill to reverse the Medicaid cuts in President Donald Trump’s tax breaks and spending cuts bill, passed this summer.
Exact figures on the number of workers who have been RIFed were not immediately available. Still, conversations at a demonstration in Covington against the shutdown Thursday night indicate that much of the office’s IT staff and collections support staff have received RIF notices. Those employees deemed essential are still working during the furlough.
Mark Brooks, an IT specialist living in Florence, was RIFed last Friday, Oct. 10. He mentioned that he was only three years away from being eligible for full retirement benefits, and now he has to decide his next move.
“I’m in a position where if you’re going to cut my job, and I have no other choice, I’ll just retire and take my pension and walk away,” Brooks said.
Following the shutdown, the federal Office of Management and Budget said that over 4,000 federal workers would be fired, according to court filings. U.S. District Judge Susan Illston in San Francisco temporarily blocked the administration on Wednesday from firing workers during the government shutdown, saying the cuts appeared to be politically motivated and were being carried out without much thought.
Demonstrators in Covington pointed to the Government Employee Fair Treatment Act of 2019, which guarantees back pay for furloughed federal employees and was actually signed into law by Trump during his first administration. The act was passed in the wake of the last federal shutdown between 2018 and 2019. Despite this, the administration has intimated that it would not necessarily guarantee back pay for furloughed workers.
The situation had led to a profound feeling of uncertainty among the workers, said Danielle Harper, a lead collection representative with the IRS. Harper, who lives in Cincinnati and has not been RIFed, has worked out of the Covington office for 17 years.
Although Harper said she’s “blessed to still be working,” she qualified that by saying “every day is something different. One minute, we’re told one thing, and then you come to work the next day, and it’s changed. So, there’s no consistency. Everything is uncertain.”
Harper encouraged people not to lose sight of “the big picture,” rather than getting caught up in partisan bickering.
“We’re not here to take money,” Harper said. “What we do, it helps fund the government. It helps fund our country… It’s not about supporting one or the other. It’s about what’s in the best interest for the country.”
Janie Har, Seung Min Kim and Stephen Groves of the Associated Press contributed reporting to this story.