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Washington, D.C. — The National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) has won a major arbitration decision striking down as violations of federal law and regulations the unfettered discretion of Bureau of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) managers to set and change employee work schedules at will and without regard to the agency’s legal obligations.

“For the past six years, CBP has run roughshod over an employee’s right to be governed by sane scheduling practices. Many CBP employees are being forced to work with split days off, different daily shifts within the same work week and arbitrary changes to their working hours with little notice,” said NTEU President Colleen M. Kelley.

“This decision, which tells CBP it must follow the dictates of federal law and rules—that are also contained in the NTEU-CBP labor agreement—is welcome and long-overdue,” she added.

The arbitrator’s ruling impacts only Officers from CBP’s legacy Customs Service, since the grievance leading to the arbitration was filed prior to the May 2007 certification and the related representation election in which NTEU became the representative for a new 21,000-employee CBP bargaining unit.

Kelley said NTEU is exploring similar litigation based on a review of CBP’s scheduling practices for the newly expanded bargaining unit that now includes Officers from the former Immigration and Naturalization Service and Agriculture Inspectors from the Department of Agriculture.

Under applicable law and regulation, employees are to receive one week notice of their work shifts; be scheduled so they receive two consecutive days off; have schedules that provide for uniform daily work hours for each day of the week; and be scheduled regardless of whether a holiday falls within the work week.

By law, CBP is obligated to meet these requirements unless it “would be seriously handicapped in carrying out its functions” or that “costs would be substantially increased.”

Instead, CBP—which based its scheduling decisions on a revised national inspectional assignment policy (RNIAP) it implemented in 2001—changed employee work hours from one day to the next, failed to provide consecutive days off, changed schedules during weeks with holidays to avoid overtime premium pay and otherwise failed to provide the protections embodied in law and applicable regulations, said the arbitrator.

Under her decision, the parties have 60 days to attempt to arrive at a voluntary settlement addressing the appropriate remedy; President Kelley said NTEU not only will insist that CBP begin following the law immediately, but will seek to recover monies due employees as a result of CBP’s illegal acts.

“CBP now has two choices,” President Kelley said. “It can recognize it erred in giving unfettered discretion to local managers for scheduling or CBP could file yet another appeal and continue to violate employees’ legal rights.”

NTEU is the largest independent federal union, representing 150,000 employees in 31 agencies and departments.