NTEU Files FLRA Petition For Representation Election
NTEU filed a petition with the Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA) seeking an election to become the exclusive representative of a 40,000-employee Transportation Security Administration (TSA) unit.
TSA is a unit of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), where NTEU already is the exclusive representative of its 24,000-employee Customs and Border Protection (CBP) unit.
“We have enough support among Transportation Security Officers (TSOs) to meet the FLRA’s 30 percent criteria for filing such a petition and seeking an election,” said NTEU President Colleen M. Kelley. “I am confident that when TSOs examine the records, performance and expertise of the unions competing in such an election, NTEU will prevail. No other union can match our record of success for federal employees.”
The CBP election, conducted by the FLRA in 2006, was then the largest union representation election in the federal sector. NTEU won that election over the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) by a more than two-to-one margin.
President Kelley said NTEU continues to have questions about the legal and practical effects of a previous 2003 FLRA decision rejecting an AFGE petition for a TSA election since employees did not then—and still do not—have collective bargaining rights. Nonetheless, NTEU chose to file a petition at this time to ensure it would be on the election ballot, if the FLRA reverses itself on this issue, thus giving TSA employees their choice of a representative. More
MORE NEWS
Kelley, Other Leaders Honor Those In CBP Killed in the Line of Duty
NTEU members last week paid tribute to Customs and Border Protection (CBP) employees who lost their lives in the line of duty during a solemn candlelight vigil.
NTEU President Colleen M. Kelley was joined by Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Deputy Secretary Jane Holl Lute, CBP Acting Deputy Commissioner David V. Aguilar and several hundred union members at the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial for an hour-long ceremony.
“We meet at this hallowed place,” President Kelley told the attendees, “to express publicly what we never forget privately—our respect for the commitment to duty of those members of U.S. Customs and Border Protection who have given their lives in service to our country.” We have, Kelley added, a profound sense of loss that is tempered by an equally profound sense of pride in the willingness of these men and women to protect our nation.
President Kelley’s sentiments were echoed by Deputy Secretary Lute and Acting Deputy Commissioner Aguilar who each spoke of the risk these employees, and their families, willingly shoulder every day. These employees have a spirit to serve, a desire to serve, despite risks that are high and dangers that are very real, Acting Deputy Commissioner Aguilar said. More
NTEU Wins Multi-Million Dollar Awards Settlement
NTEU has secured a $10 million settlement on behalf of thousands of CBP employees, ending a five-year battle over the agency's unilateral termination of the negotiated awards program.
The settlement originally stems from a grievance NTEU filed following CBP’s 2005 cancellation of a union-negotiated awards program. Pay outs ranging from $454 to $2,419 will be provided to legacy Customs employees for fiscal years 2005 through 2009.
For eight successful years, before CBP unilaterally terminated the program, employees had overwhelmingly supported the joint awards program because they perceived it as fair, credible and transparent. The program gave employees input into who received awards, which helped to ensure that performance was rewarded based upon merit and not favoritism.
CBP will implement the settlement agreement within 60 days and provide to every covered employee half of the average award paid to bargaining unit employees for each of the impacted years if the employee did not receive an award for that year. Employees will receive payments no later than May 8.
Because they were added to NTEU's bargaining unit after the original grievance was filed, certain employees, such as legacy Immigration and Agriculture employees or those workers hired after July 24, 2004, are not covered by the settlement. The contracts former Immigration and Agriculture employees were working under at the time did not include guaranteed performance awards as the NTEU-Customs contract did.