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El Paso, Texas — The Bureau of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) needs to add hundreds of officers to its El Paso operations, and thousands more nationwide, to fully staff its border ports of entry while, simultaneously, managing for contingencies and allowing time for mandated training.

“I do not have to tell the people of El Paso that there are severe staffing shortages at our border crossings. They live with the long lines,” said President Colleen M. Kelley of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) today during a special field hearing of the House Homeland Security Committee.

NTEU represents more than 20,000 CBP employees who are responsible for clearing people and commodities at 327 ports of entry across the country. The House committee is looking into a range of issues at the nation’s ports—including long wait times for both passengers and commercial goods entering the country.

President Kelley emphasized that NTEU has “for years been saying that CBP needs several thousand additional officers at its ports of entry.” Specifically, the union has called on Congress for an increase of at least 4,000 CBP Officers at the nation’s air, land and seaports to allow the agency to achieve its dual missions of protecting the country and facilitating vital commerce.

The NTEU leader was sharply critical of CBP El Paso management practices—particularly when it comes to work schedules—that have caused employee morale to plummet.

For example, she said, CBP Officers in El Paso have been scheduled to work what are known as “free doubles”—back-to-back shifts totaling 16 hours that straddle two pay periods, with the intent of avoiding overtime pay for the second eight-hour shift.

Additionally, President Kelley said, there is a frequent practice in El Paso of scheduling officers for varying shifts within the same pay period—say 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. one day, then 4 p.m. to midnight the next day, then midnight to 8 a.m. the following day.

“These schedules can be altered daily with no notice,” she said, “making it impossible for CBP Officers to have any certainty in planning personal or family activities during off-duty hours.”

The impact of this kind of behavior by CBP managers both here and across the country, she said, is to drive employee morale to near the bottom among major federal agencies and make it much more difficult to recruit and retain high-quality employees. Nationwide, she said, CBP Officers are “leaving the service in droves.”

Kelley also noted that both in El Paso and nationally, staffing shortages have been exacerbated by the lack of law enforcement officer (LEO) retirement benefit for CBP Officers. This situation has been positively addressed in the recent omnibus funding bill for 2008. That legislation contained language that will provide enhanced retirement benefits to all CBP Officers.

She strongly recommended that CBP fill vacancies and increase staffing to the numbers in its own personnel model; reestablish specialization of inspectional functions by dropping the misguided “One Face at the Border” program which combines the jobs of three specialties into a single position; provide law enforcement officer status for CBP Officers; repeal Department of Homeland Security personnel flexibility authority, which the department has tried to use to impose regressive personnel rules; and allow employee input into the shift management system.

Kelley noted that NTEU recently won a major arbitration decision that found that CBP had not been abiding by existing federal laws requiring employees to receive one week notice of their work shifts; be scheduled so they can receive two consecutive days off; and have schedules that provide for uniform daily work hours for each day of the week. “Unfortunately,” she said, “it is appears that CBP will appeal that decision, further delaying resolution of this ongoing problem.”

NTEU is the largest independent federal union, representing 150,000 employees in 31 agencies and departments, including more than 800 CBP employees at the El Paso port of entry.