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Washington, D.C.—The president of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) today called the nomination of W. Ralph Basham to be commissioner of the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) an opportunity to foster needed positive change and improvements in the troubled CBP workplace.

NTEU President Colleen M. Kelley also said NTEU looks forward to working with the nominee, who presently is director of the Secret Service.

NTEU represents some 14,000 employees in CBP, which is a major component of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Recent studies, both public and private, have documented serious morale problems among DHS employees and generated warnings about the ability of the agency to fulfill its critical missions.

“The first order of business for a new CBP commissioner,” President Kelley said, “should be to listen to frontline employees about ways to make our nation’s border safer.” DHS leadership, including that in CBP, “essentially has turned a deaf ear not only to the ideas of its workforce, but to their needs in terms of resources, staffing and training as well” she said.

The NTEU leader said she is hopeful Basham’s lengthy law enforcement experience “will lead to a greater appreciation among senior officials in both CBP and DHS of the importance and fairness of granting law enforcement officer (LEO) status” to CBP Officers.

Basham, who at one time headed the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (FLETC) in Glynco, Georgia, “is well aware not only of the dangers inherent in law enforcement work,” President Kelley said, “but of the dedication required of the employees called on to perform these vital duties.”

NTEU has been fighting for LEO status in CBP for some time; the status carries with it an early retirement option which is common in the law enforcement community and which helps develop and retain a vigorous workforce.

Kelley also strongly urged the CBP nominee to make review the agency’s “One Face at the Border” initiative a top priority. The initiative combines the functions of legacy Customs, Immigration and Agriculture inspectors into a single position. The result has been a serious loss of inspectional expertise at border points.

“The rollout of this program has been seriously mismanaged,” Kelley said. “Employees are being held accountable for work they have not been properly trained to do.”

She also called for renewed emphasis on the agency’s traditional trade mission, including a reversal of personnel cutbacks in this critical function; strongly recommended that a new commissioner “rethink the direction” CBP is heading in terms of the arbitrary treatment of employees on such key issues as scheduling, work assignments and overtime; and urged development of both a fair pay system, “free from personal favoritism and cronyism,” and a labor relations system “that respects employee rights and due process.”

NTEU has won an injunction in a federal court suit seeking to block implementation of a regressive DHS personnel system that would severely curtail employee collective bargaining, due process and appeal rights.

NTEU is the largest independent federal union, representing some 150,000 employees in 30 agencies and departments, including those in CBP.