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Washington, D.C. — In a formal motion, the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) has asked a federal body to take immediate action to help NTEU and the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) replace the four different sets of work rules governing management and employees today with a nationwide contract imposing one set of rules. The motion was filed with the Federal Service Impasses Panel (FSIP).

“Almost from the day CBP was created, its leadership has complained about having to manage under four different sets of work rules that it inherited with the agencies that were consolidated to form CBP,” said NTEU President Colleen M. Kelley. “CBP testified under oath before the Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA) about the hardships and costs this creates and the need to replace multiple unions with just one union and one set of rules. The same management that pleaded for swift government action to throw two other unions out of CBP is now saying it can manage indefinitely under these multiple sets of work rules.”

At issue is CBP’s refusal to agree even on a set of bargaining ground rules, the first step in negotiating a new agreement. NTEU is asking the FSIP to quickly intervene in the ground rules dispute and respond to a ground rules request the parties filed with the Panel nearly six weeks ago. NTEU is arguing that the FSIP should insist that CBP management remain true to the needs it testified to under oath before the FLRA and force a quick replacement of the four sets of rules.

Within days of being certified as the exclusive CBP representative, NTEU last May proposed to move immediately to one set of work rules by adopting the contract provisions that NTEU had with the Customs Service. Legacy Customs employees make up the vast majority of the new CBP bargaining unit. “This would have been the least disruptive and least costly approach for management and the employees, but suddenly management has changed its tune,” said Kelley.

“It has now been five months since NTEU presented CBP with an immediate solution to this dilemma and CBP has deliberately chosen the slowest possible route to one set of rules,” said Kelley.

The ideal solution, NTEU said in its FSIP motion, would be for the Panel to impose the prior NTEU-Customs contract as an interim agreement and order adoption of the prior ground rules that NTEU and the Customs Service used for nearly two decades to rapidly conclude contract negotiations without any need for FSIP intervention.

“By adopting NTEU’s proposal, the FSIP would not only advance the interests of management, as attested to by their sworn statements, but also serve the interests of the CBP employees who deserve clarity and accountability from their agency leaders,” she said.

NTEU has also asked the Panel to consider:

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Ordering the parties to immediately begin bargaining while the Panel finalizes the ground rules;

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Ordering the parties to adopt the NTEU-Customs ground rules; and/or

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Appointing an FSIP member to hold a one-day mediation with the parties followed by a bench arbitration decision on the dispute from that Panel member at the end of that day.

Kelley acknowledged that the union’s motion was unusual, but noted “the Panel has almost doubled the time it needs to decide matters over the last six years from 59 days in 2000 to 94 days in 2007 and we do not want CBP and its employees to suffer because of that delay.”

CBP is a major unit of DHS, and was created by combining employees from Customs, the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the Agriculture Department.

NTEU is the largest independent federal union, representing 150,000 employees in 31 agencies and departments.