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Washington, D.C.—The National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) has won a long-running dispute with the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) that will allow frontline homeland security employees to wear cargo shorts in work environments including air and seaport cargo areas, and land border passenger and cargo environments nationwide.

The matter was settled when the Federal Service Impasses Panel (FSIP) ordered the parties to adopt the NTEU proposal.

In its decision, the FSIP called the NTEU proposal “the better choice” for resolving the impasse. “In our view,” the FSIP wrote, “the employer has not demonstrated how permitting CBP employees to wear cargo shorts in all Class 3 environments would preclude it from presenting a more consistent, professional law enforcement appearance or compromising its ability to meet its mission.”

“There never was a rational, supportable basis for the CBP policy,” said NTEU President Colleen M. Kelley. “It served only as another drag on employee morale in this troubled agency.”

The issue arose in 2004 when CBP unilaterally implemented a policy limiting the wearing of cargo shorts to those officers working in confined cargo environments at Southwest border locations, in South Florida and in Puerto Rico. CBP claimed that NTEU’s proposal to negotiate over cargo shorts violated its right to determine its internal security practices and asserted that to allow officers to wear cargo shorts would create the risk of sunburn and exposure to hazardous substances that could be absorbed by the skin.

NTEU fought CBP’s non-negotiability argument and filed a successful appeal with the Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA), which found the union proposal to expand the wearing of cargo shorts throughout what is known as the ‘Class 3’ work environment a proper subject for negotiation. NTEU then brought the matter to the FSIP. NTEU was the only CBP union to fight for employees on this issue.

President Kelley consistently called on CBP to accept NTEU’s proposal “and send a message to employees that it supports them in their work, rather than continuing to engage in senseless litigation.” The agency refused to do so.

“This decision turns back one of the many senseless demands and restrictions CBP is forcing on its employees, both in the name of national security and morale,” Kelley said. “NTEU fought the restrictions on cargo shorts and we will continue to battle against other short-sighted CBP policies, such as restricting facial hair on men and dictating hair color. There are many more important items CBP should be focusing on, rather than spending time imposing pointless policy after policy on an already-demoralized workforce.”

NTEU is the largest independent federal union, representing some 150,000 federal workers in 30 agencies and departments, including some 16,000 in CBP—making it the largest union representative in that agency.