June 6, 2008

CBP Employees:

I am writing to update you on the first week of bargaining over the CBP contract. It was a turbulent week but ended better than we anticipated with management making some major shifts in its initial positioning.

As I noted in my earlier communication to you, when CBP management delivered its proposed new collective bargaining agreement, it was abundantly clear what kind of future the agency was proposing for you. Under this proposal, you would have no rights to bid into jobs, to earn overtime, to get back pay when managers mistreat them, to work alternative work schedules or to plan on regular days off.

Basically, CBP was proposing a contract without one single enforceable right, other than what is proscribed by law.

Prior to the start of negotiations, it was clear that CBP was attempting to manipulate the bargaining process by trying to ensure that these anti-employee proposals would be imposed by the management-friendly Federal Services Impasse Panel (FSIP.) NTEU responded to this by refusing to sign the ground rules agreement imposed by the FSIP, bargaining under protest, and requesting a “stay” of the Panel’s ground rules decision before the Federal Labor Relations Authority.
 

The week’s bargaining got off to a rocky start. Management had chosen a room that was far too small for all the people on the two teams (bargaining was later relocated to a larger room) and then tried to intimidate NTEU’s team by announcing it would be charging our team annual leave for their lunch hour.
 
Then, there was the hurdle with the make-up of management’s team. NTEU believes that negotiating this agreement is a job for the best, brightest, and most experienced field managers the agency has.
 
After all, NTEU brought in five CBP employees with over 125 years of CBP experience among them from just about every type of port. It would take CBP’s most skilled field managers to talk substantively about important, detailed topics such as bid and rotation systems, overtime and alternative work schedules.
 
Instead, CBP decided to fill four out of its five team slots with labor relations specialists rather than proven field managers who have actually worked at a port. More