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Washington, D.C. -- The National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) today said it is "a sad irony" that on the same day front line Customs inspectors along the U.S.?Mexican border seized more than two tons of cocaine, a congressional committee both cut the pay of Customs employees and attacked their collective bargaining rights. The cocaine seizure was the single largest by Customs in at least three years.

NTEU President Robert M. Tobias called the action on the fiscal 1999 Customs fimding bill by the House Ways and Means Committee "a danger to the well?being not just of Customs employees, but to the public they work so hard to protect." He said the Committee language "will make the already?tough job of drug interdiction that much more difficult."

The agency itself attributed the $200 million seizure Thursday of more than two tons of cocaine at Laredo, Tex., to Operation Brass Ring, an intensive six?month drug interdiction program along the southern border?an effort in which Customs and NTEU are working in an unprecedented labor?management partnership at every level, including both planning and operations.

Tobias said NTEU is "adamantly opposed" to the bill and will fight it as it moves through Congress. He called it "an extremely dangerous precedent" for all American workers, in both the public and private sectors.

The union president said the Committee "has unwisely injected itself' into the handling of critical. matters "that determine if there are enough people on the front lines" to accomplish the core Customs' law enforcement mission, centering, on stemming the flow of illegal narcotics, attacking money laundering and deterring terrorism.These matters include such key negotiated local decisions as minimum staff levels and hours worked.

"Clearly," Tobias said, "there are those in Congress more interested in a frontal assault on the rights of federal employees than they are in how things actually get done and are getting done in the operations of the Customs Service."

The Committee bill would allow the Customs commissioner to break collective bargaining agreements on a determination that the agreement would have "an adverse impact upon the interdiction of contraband," including drugs.

"One would hope," Tobias said, that Customs "does not enter into contracts that it believes interfere with the interdiction of drugs."

While NTEU is satisfied with the section of the bill that provides for small increases in funding and personnel for Customs, Tobias said NTEU is strongly opposed to changes in the agency's compensation system, especially dealing with night shift differentials, commonly worked in Customs. "The changes approved by the Committee amount to an unfair, unjustified pay cut for Customs employees," Tobias said.