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Washington, D.C.—The leader of the union representing thousands of front-line border security officers in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said today she is encouraged by increased congressional attention to pay and benefit practices for federal law enforcement officers (LEOs). She nonetheless expressed concerns about portions of a concept paper prepared by congressional staff members.

As a central part of the discussion, President Colleen M. Kelley of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) said NTEU will continue to make the case for LEO retirement benefits for officers in DHS’s Bureau of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) who are being unfairly denied it despite the clear law enforcement nature of their work.

“LEO retirement status is long-overdue for these men and women who every day perform dangerous tasks critical to our national interest and security,” President Kelley said, adding that she is encouraged by the apparent suggestions contained in the working paper for improved retirement benefits for some groups, including CBP officers.

NTEU plans a “thorough analysis” of the concept paper prepared by House and Senate staff members, Kelley said. Along with retirement benefits, NTEU will be looking closely at the issue of premium pay, including overtime pay. “It is important that premium pay provisions are not changed in ways that prove harmful to employees,” Kelley said. She added that the prospect of having statutory overtime and premium pay systems modified or abandoned at the discretion of the director of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), as proposed in the paper, is “very troubling.”

The NTEU leader said the union continues its strong support for passage of H.R. 1002, bipartisan legislation introduced by Reps. Bob Filner (D-CA) and John McHugh (R-NY) that would provide CBP officers with retirement at age 50 with 20 years of service—a key element of LEO status. NTEU’s CBP chapter leaders and members will gather in Washington in mid-November to lobby for approval of the Filner-McHugh bill and on a number of other CBP-related issues.

As the discussion on the congressional working paper moves forward, possibly leading to legislation, President Kelley said she remains concerned about a pay-for-performance system for law enforcement officers—where teamwork is essential—and reliance on OPM to set up a new pay and performance evaluation system.

The issue of differing pay and retirement systems for federal law enforcement officers gained increased scrutiny in Congress some 15 months ago, with an OPM report serving as the catalyst. In it, OPM proposed to give itself broad authority to create and maintain a government-wide law enforcement pay and retirement system.

As she did at that time, however, President Kelley today emphasized that any pay and retirement system created and maintained through administrative regulation rather than statute raises serious concerns.

“There is no system in the federal government where retirement benefits are set by regulation as opposed to statute,” she said, noting there are “few things more important” to an agency’s ability to recruit and retain qualified workers than for present and prospective employees to be able to rely on retirement rules.

“Giving OPM the right to alter the federal law enforcement officer basic pay, premium pay and retirement systems by regulatory fiat is a bad idea,” she said.