Border agency postpones furloughs and overtime cuts for its employees
Source: Washington Post
By Joe Davidson,
Monday, April 1, 6:12 PM
Border Patrol agents had been bracing for a big hit on their pocketbooks.
For weeks, they have labored under a threat of unpaid furlough days and the elimination of overtime, a powerful combination that placed them among the federal employees who had the most to lose from the budget cuts known as sequestration.
On Monday, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) postponed that threat. There’s a sigh of relief coming from Border Patrol agents, but no cheers.
“For now, people can breathe easy .?.?. but we don’t know for how long,” said Thane Gallagher, a Border Patrol agent based in San Diego, speaking as a union member. “It’s good news for now.”
There has been other good news, of a limited sort, on the furlough front. It’s all in the context, however, of continued serious budget cuts.
Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/federal_government/border-agency-postpones-furloughs-and-overtime-cuts-for-its-employees/2013/04/01/a29c5a76-9afd-11e2-9a79-eb5280c81c63_story.html?wprss=rss_politics
The big problem for Border Patrol agents is the AUO (Automatic Unauthorized Overtime). Because of the distances involved for most border patrol agents from the station where they report in to the remote place they work they need about 2 hours a day in and back from the muster point to the border spot. As a result they frequently work about 11 or 12 hours a day and spend about 8-9 hours in the field on a shift.
They get 2 hours AUO a day so that if they work 11 hours they only get paid 10, but they don't have to request OT every day.
Taking away AUO would have had two major effects. The first effect is that it would create real operational chaos on the border, and it really would, and the second thing is that it would reduce (with furlough cuts) Border Patrol pay by 40%.
I believe that this move is part of a larger move on the immigration issue.
