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Washington, D.C.—The leader of the union representing nearly 14,000 legacy U.S. Customs Service employees in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) today urged a key House subcommittee to address a number of critical issues—including the need for additional resources—that impact the ability of these employees to effectively guard the nation’s borders.

And while applauding the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Trade for “recognizing the 21st century needs” of DHS’s Bureau of Customs and Border Protection (CBP), National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) President Colleen M. Kelley urged members to get a first-hand look at their work by visiting CBP ports in their home districts.

“Talk to the inspectors, canine enforcement officers and import specialists there to fully comprehend the jobs they do and what their work lives are like,” President Kelley said. “These men and women are deserving of more resources and technology to perform their jobs better and more efficiently.”

In comprehensive testimony on CBP issues, the NTEU leader called the administration’s fiscal 2005 request of $6.2 billion “the bare minimum” needed to fund long-term and vital CBP projects, including more aggressive trade and border security enforcement.

Moreover, she warned that discretionary funding caps in the House Budget Resolution could make it “extremely difficult, if not impossible” to secure the additional appropriations needed by CBP.

Kelley disputed a DHS assertion that its border security agencies are fully staffed, and called for the hiring of an additional 1,588 officers on the U.S. northern border. That would comply with provisions of the Patriot Act, passed in the wake of the attacks on the U.S. of Sept. 11, 2001.

The NTEU president reviewed a broad range of CBP issues, and urged steps to address them. These include prompt action to correct a legislative oversight that threatens to limit annual overtime pay for legacy Customs officers; and an end to the unfair practice of forcing newly-trained legacy Customs officers and new CBP officers to work a sixth day at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (FLETC) without either straight time or overtime pay.

She also encouraged subcommittee members to support legislative efforts to grant legacy Customs inspectors and canine enforcement officers law enforcement officer (LEO) status; stressed the importance of reauthorization of the COBRA user fee account that funds inspectional overtime and pays for some 1,300 legacy Customs officers around the country; and urged greater respect for legacy Customs import specialists—including a long-overdue upgrade in their job classification—who facilitate more than $1 trillion worth of trade each year.

In addition, President Kelley repeated NTEU’s serious reservations with a DHS initiative called “One Face at the Border,” which threatens the dilution or loss of inspectional expertise by combining the work of officers from three agencies, including legacy Customs, into a single CBP position.

NTEU is the largest independent federal union, representing some 150,000 employees in 29 agencies and departments.