Over OT, Assignments
Order 'Customs' To Bargain With Union

By GINGER ADAMS OTIS

The union representing Customs and Border Protection employees who work for the U.S. Customs Service in the Department of Homeland Security won an important arbitration hearing after challenging decisions made by local managers about staffing and overtime assignments.

COLLEEN M. KELLEY: Ruling gives union voice.

The National Treasury Employees' Union has for the past five years battled with management at the Customs Service over its implementation of new overtime and assignment procedures.

Required to Negotiate

The union said that while the agency had the right to assign extra work, CBP supervisors had an obligation to bargain over the impact of new assignment policies with the NTEU. When repeated efforts to establish a dialogue failed, the union filed a grievance and the issue eventually came before an arbitration judge.

Last week the arbitrator ruled in favor of NTEU, saying that CBP supervisors had to bargain with the union. The two parties have 60 days to find a solution, or the arbitrator will impose a remedy.

"Our country has put a heavy burden on CBP employees as the first line of defense against terrorists, illegal drugs and contraband - a duty these professionals willingly shoulder," said NTEU President Colleen M. Kelley.

"At the same time, CBP continues to violate the rights of these frontline employees by refusing to give them a voice in such basic issues as the impact of assignments and overtime. NTEU has fought this policy change for more than five years, and we will now seek a proper remedy with the agency."

CBP: May 'Impede' Us

A spokeswoman for the CBP said the agency is studying the arbitrator's ruling and will determine a course of action "after it has become final."

CBP remains "committed to ensuring that its employees are treated fairly and deployed effectively as they work to secure the nation's borders against terrorist threats and facilitate the flow of legitimate trade and travel," the agency said in a written statement.

At the same time, CBP said, the ruling as it stands now could "seriously impede the rapid, flexible alteration of work schedules, staffing levels and deployment of CBP Officers to meet emerging threats."

The grievance stemmed from a change the Bush Administration made to a 1995 agreement between NTEU and the U.S. Customs Service. The parties had bargained a National Inspectional Assignment Policy (NIAP) that the union contended worked well for both employees and supervisors. It regulated how and when extra work could be imposed on staff.

Despite its success, Customs unilaterally implemented a Revised NIAP (RNIAP) in October 2001 and declared that it no longer had to bargain over the policy with NTEU. When the Customs Service became part of DHS in 2003, it continued to use RNIAP.

NTEU fought back through the grievance process, arguing that its traditional role as the national representative of the employees who have become legacy Customs inspectors in DHS meant that any workload changes on the local level had to be bargained with the union. NTEU said it was willing to revert to the previous NIAP agreement that allowed local changes to be bargained with local union chapters, but DHS refused the offer.

"NTEU continues to believe that the best practice for the agency and the employees would be to bargain local changes at that level. But since our efforts to reinstate that practice have been rebuffed, we are pleased that CBP has now been ordered to honor its bargaining responsibilities to us at the national level," Ms. Kelley said.

The CBP spokeswoman said the agency's use of NIAP is "absolutely essential to the accomplishment of CBP's mission, which is the protection of America's borders against terrorism, illegal drugs, weapons and illegal immigration."