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Washington, D.C.—Front-line employees at the nation’s border crossing points charged with the important responsibilities of helping protect the county and facilitate its vital trade simply do not have sufficient resources, the head of the National Treasury Employees Union told a key House subcommittee today.

These employees are “capable and committed to the varied missions” of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), NTEU President Colleen M. Kelley said in testimony submitted to the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security, and “they are deserving of more resources and technology to perform their jobs better and more efficiently.”

In particular, the NTEU leader said, staffing for U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP)—a key DHS component—continues to fall well short of the goals established in the agency’s own resource allocation model (RAM).

The fiscal 2007 DHS appropriations conference report directed CBP to submit a RAM for current and future staffing requirements—and to do so every two years; the 2007 RAM concluded the agency needs as many as 4,000 additional CBP Officers (CBPOs) and Agricultural Specialists to keep up with work demands—an increase of between seven and 25 percent at the nation’s 327 land, air and sea ports of entry.

President Kelley called on the committee to fund staffing levels as specified in the agency’s model, as well as provide additional funding for staff needed to expand inspection of southbound cargo and address increasing violence at the U.S.-Mexican border.

The NTEU leader also addressed the need for additional personnel to handle commercial operations at the border. The most recent RAM said that while CBP has more than 8,200 employees involved in commercial trade operations, the number needed to adequately staff that function is more than 10,000.

“The next RAM, as mandated by the SAFE Port Act, is due this June 30,” Kelley said, “and NTEU expects to see similar numbers in terms of CBP trade operations staffing needs.”

On other matters, President Kelley called for the inclusion of language in the fiscal 2010 DHS funding bill prohibiting the use of appropriated money to implement any part of a new DHS human resource management system to bargaining unit employees.

This has been a continuing, and successful battle, by NTEU; still, the union president noted that even though DHS has rescinded the application of the human resource system and has no authority to issue any new regulations, those regulations remain in place for adverse actions, appeals, performance management and pay and classification—and could be reactivated if the funding prohibition is lifted.

She also called for a congressional end to CBP’s much-maligned ‘One Face at the Border’ initiative, which combines the work of inspectors from three legacy agencies into a single position. The result has been a severe loss of inspectional expertise.

“It is apparent that CBP sees its ‘One Face at the Border’ initiative as a means to increase management flexibility without increasing staffing levels,” she said. Ending this failed experiment would “ensure that expertise is retained with respect to customs, immigration and agriculture inspection functions at CBP,” Kelley added.

NTEU is the largest independent federal union, representing some 150,000 employees in 31 agencies and departments, including the entire 22,000-employee CBP bargaining unit.