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Washington, D.C.—The Bureau of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has been ordered by an arbitrator to rerun its employee awards process for fiscal 2005 in the wake of the agency’s unilateral and illegal implementation of a new awards program covering that year, the head of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) said today. The decision could mean additional millions of dollars in awards for CBP employees.

The arbitration decision resulted from a national grievance filed by NTEU. In a closely-related matter, NTEU on Friday filed another national grievance against CBP for the agency’s action in making awards in secret and refusing to divulge 2005 nomination and award-recipient information, as has been past practice. CBP managers are even telling employees to keep the fact that they received an award from their colleagues. NTEU also plans to file a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to obtain the awards distribution information.

The initial arbitration decision on the 2005 awards program found that CBP violated both the parties’ labor agreement and federal law, and reinstates the awards process spelled out in the NTEU-CBP contract. The decision revives negotiated joint labor-management committees at the local level to make award recommendations by consensus, with final approval by a higher level agency official.

Arbitrator Roger Kaplan ruled that the suspension of the joint committees—which had operated successfully for some eight years without challenge either by the Customs Service or, later, CBP—“was clearly contrary to what the agency agreed to” in its contract with NTEU. Union President Colleen M. Kelley said “the arbitrator saw CBP’s conduct for what it was—illegal.”

The joint awards process “had the overwhelming approval of the bargaining unit for eight successful years,” Kelley said. “because it helped ensure that employee performance was rewarded based upon merit, not personal favoritism.”

However, in late 2004, CBP said it would implement a unified awards policy for all employees, rather than the locally-based program the parties had negotiated. When NTEU and CBP did not agree on changes after a single negotiating session in December 2004, the agency immediately suspended the joint awards committees and later eliminated them.

President Kelley said the action by CBP in terminating the committees and “reverting to its previously discredited unilateral awards policy” is another in a series of steps taken by the agency to secure the immediate implementation of its policies, “even at the risk of losing the confidence and respect of its employees.”

In ordering the agency to rerun the fiscal 2005 awards program using the contractual process, Kaplan said the functioning of the joint committees “was essential to the process,” and that they must be reconstructed.

Kelley added: “I have to ask why the secrecy? This seems to be an ominous precursor of how DHS will institute a pay-for-performance system. Any system without the critically-important characteristics of being fair, transparent and credible to employees will be unsuccessful and open to the same criticism leveled at this awards program.”

NTEU is the largest independent federal union, representing some 150,000 employees in 30 agencies and departments, including 14,000 in CBP.