Border agency ordered to reconsider 2005 bonuses

High-performing employees in U.S. Customs and Border Protection could receive additional pay for 2005, an arbitrator ruled this month.

CBP has been ordered to reconsider employees' 2005 superior achievement cash awards after arbitrator Roger Kaplan found that the agency should not have made decisions unilaterally without input from federal employee union representatives.

In December 2004, the agency disbanded local joint awards committees, which were composed of union and agency representatives, and began awarding the bonuses without the advice of union representatives.

CBP agreed to the joint committee process in a contract with the National Treasury Employees Union, which represents former Customs Service employees who were folded into CBP when the Homeland Security Department was established, and which filed the grievance that led to the arbitration decision. The contract predated the formation of CBP.

Kristi Clemens, CBP assistant commissioner for public affairs, said the new awards system was designed to streamline the awards process.

"This goal has presented many challenges as three distinct agencies with three different unions have come together to form CBP," Clemens said. "This new streamlined awards policy, implemented in [fiscal] 2005, is a unified system providing employees with the right to nominate themselves, or other employees, for an award."

But Kaplan said in his ruling that the agency did not have a good reason to ignore a previously negotiated agreement and said CBP failed to present evidence that multiple awards policies were inefficient.

Clemens said her agency is reviewing the ruling and deciding whether or not to appeal it.

NTEU President Colleen Kelley said employees stand to receive "millions" in additional awards, but that concrete figures are not yet available. Kaplan's ruling said that no employees will lose money as a result of this decision.

Kelley said she was most disturbed by the secrecy of CBP's new awards process, in contrast to the joint committee process, which she characterized as "very transparent." She said employees were not informed of nominees or the process by which they were selected.

"It really has broader ramifications than the awards system," Kelley said. "It goes to any kind of a system where CBP and DHS decide it wants to change the rules and put in a system that is not credible or transparent."

DHS is in the process of creating a broad pay-for-performance system. NTEU, along with several other unions, won the first round in a lawsuit against the new system, claiming it unfairly stripped collective bargaining rights.

The unions said they may also sue over the pay aspects of the personnel system once it's implemented. Both sides appealed parts of the judge's ruling and are awaiting a court date for those arguments.