The National Border Patrol Council continues to meet with
representatives in Washington DC in order to explain and garner support for the
Border Patrol Pay Reform Act.
With the assistance of our lobbyist McAllister and Quinn
last month alone we had over 30 meetings with representatives and several
meetings with Agency representatives. Some of them included staff members of
the following legislators:
Senator Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota
Senator Ron Robinson of Wisconsin
Senator Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin
Senator Mark Pryor of Arizona
Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky
Senator Jeff Chiesa of New Jersey
Representative Ruben Hinojosa of Texas
Senator John McCain of Arizona
Senator Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire
Senator Rob Portman of Ohio
Senator Mark Begich of Alaska
All of the meetings went very well. All members were very
receptive to Border Patrol issues. Some of the highlights of what we discussed
are below. If you are currently stationed in these representatives area or if
you have family in these districts it would help our efforts if you could call
their offices and tell them you want them to support Border Patrol Pay reform.
Border Patrol Pay
Reform
The Border Patrol Council and the Administration have come
to agreement on a pay reform package.
This package modernizes agent pay, greatly enhances border security, and
saves the federal government money. Key components include:
·
Agents will have three options on overtime. They may work 100 hours per pay period and
receive a 25% differential, work 90 hours and receive a 12.5% differential, or
work no overtime at all. Agents make the election once a year.
·
Overtime worked beyond 100 hours will be treated
as compensatory time off.
·
Agents who are a GS 12 and below will receive a one-
time two step increase to offset the loss in FLSA overtime.
The Border Patrol estimates that this reform package will
save the government $134 million per year.
This reform was introduced as an amendment by Senator Tester to the
comprehensive immigration reform package, but was not considered as part of the
floor debate due to objections to procedural rules.
Hoeven-Corker
Amendment to Immigration Reform
The Senate adopted an amendment by Senators Hoeven and
Corker that increased the funding for border security to $46 billion. This amendment included:
·
$30 billion to double the number of border
patrol agents to 40,000
·
$4.5 billion for border security technologies
·
$7.5 billion to double border fencing
The intent of the Hoeven-Corker amendment is to double the
manpower at the border. However, there
is no need to double the workforce to achieve this objective. Under the Tester amendment, over 90% of the
agents could be scheduled to work a 10-hour day instead of an 8-hour day. This additional two hours per day gives the
Border Patrol an additional ¼ of an Agent and greatly increases manpower in the
field when it needs it most.
By our estimates, if the Tester amendment were applied to
both the existing number of Agents and potentially new Agents hired under
Hoeven-Corker, we could double manpower in the field by hiring only 12,500 new Agents
– not 20,000 new Agents. The rough estimate
is this would save the federal government approximately $12 billion in payroll
and benefits alone.
The National Border Patrol Council believes whether they hire 1 or 20,000 new agents we need our archaic pay system reformed.
Terence L. Shigg
NBPC Legislative Committee member
