This time last year, the U.S. government was partially shut down, and a local protagonist was about to play a surprising role in the 35-day drama.
The National Border Patrol Council, the agents’ union based in Tucson, came out in support of the shutdown during an impromptu press conference with President Trump on Jan. 3, 2019, even though it meant their own members had to miss paychecks while continuing to work.
The union leaders’ stated goal: Supporting President Trump’s effort to force Congress to provide more funding for U.S.-Mexico border barriers.
The apparent but unstated thinking: Stay tight with Trump during the shutdown, giving him political cover, and reap other benefits over time.
Now the longer run has come, and we can better see what the union got out of its close relationship with Trump, whom the council endorsed for the Republican nomination for president in March 2016.
A contract negotiated over years was signed in September and went into effect Nov. 1. It contains some items that may mean a lot to agents but not much to outsiders, along with one surprising benefit that separates the council from other federal-employee unions.
When I asked union vice president Art Del Cueto, who also heads the council’s Local 2544 in Tucson, about the new contract, he pointed to a couple of new items. Most important: beards. For the first time, agents have a contract-protected right to grow facial hair, though it must stay under control.
As the contract language puts it: “If a beard or mustache is worn, it shall be well-groomed and neatly trimmed at all times in order not to present a ragged appearance.”
The contract also mandates that managers decide leave requests and some other benefits by seniority. In the past, Del Cueto said, some managers used favoritism in decisions that weren’t required to be decided by seniority.
But the most surprising item, highlighted in a Dec. 10 Washington Post story, was a surge in the union’s permitted “official time.” This is the amount of taxpayer-paid time that Border Patrol agents can spend on union business such as representing employees in grievances, not doing their jobs along the borders.
President Trump has made a big deal out of curtailing the power of unions representing federal workers, issuing an executive order in May 2018 that specifically targeted official time. The order says that no individual federal employee may spend more than 25% of the employee’s work time on union business, a big change for some union leaders.
The order also establishes one hour per member of the bargaining unit as the standard amount of time that a union should be allocated. So, in other words, a union like the National Border Patrol Council, with about 18,000 bargaining-unit members, would get about 18,000 hours per year of official time.
The executive order was challenged, and the courts held that it could not alter the terms of contracts.
But the council got much, much more official time in the new contract, signed long after Trump’s executive order: 74 full-time equivalent positions, or 153,920 hours of official time. That’s about 8.5 hours of official time per bargaining unit member, far beyond the standard. It’s a big benefit to the union leadership, though the help it gives the rank-and-file is questionable, and certainly it takes more agents off the line while the agency is struggling to meet its funded staffing levels.
Trump’s executive order cites the federal law defining official time in setting this standard: “No agency shall agree to authorize any amount of taxpayer-funded union time under section 7131(d) of title 5, United States Code, unless such time is reasonable, necessary, and in the public interest.”
Trump’s executive order requires all official time to be “reasonable, necessary and in the public interest.” The order is so strict about official time that it requires any agency head who agrees to a contract that gives more than one hour per bargaining member to “report this agreement or proposal to the President through the Director of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM Director) within 15 days of such an agreement or proposal.”
The order goes on: “Such report shall explain why such expenditures are reasonable, necessary, and in the public interest, describe the benefit (if any) the public will receive from the activities conducted by employees on such taxpayer-funded union time, and identify the total cost of such time to the agency.”
Trump’s tough stand on official time wobbled when it came to the union that has been his strongest supporter. In fact, Trump intervened in negotiations between Customs and Border Protection and the union late in the summer, the Post reported. While union president Brandon Judd was in the White House meeting with the president and CBP director Mark Morgan was on the phone, Trump encouraged Morgan to get a deal done with the union, according to the Post.
I contacted Judd for an interview, but he did not comment for this column.
The Border Patrol union’s deal has left a bad feeling among other federal unions, which have been struggling in negotiations with Trump-appointed agency heads. The National Citizenship and Immigration Services Council, which represents about 14,000 employees of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, came to a tentative contract deal, but the union locals rejected it in early December by a 18-2 vote, union president Danielle Spooner told me.
One of the specific sticking points that led the locals to reject the deal was official time, Spooner said. The union-negotiated deal contained just 14,000 hours, which is in line with the Trump executive order but down from 45,000 in its previous contract.
Spooner’s union, though, is one that has clashed with the Trump administration, criticizing appointees such as acting director Ken Cuccinelli and practices such as attempting to take asylum decisions away from asylum officers and give them to Border Patrol agents. It has not won friends in the White House.
In the past, Spooner said, her union supported the efforts by the National Border Patrol Council to reform the agency’s overtime system and otherwise tried to help their fellow union out.
“I feel betrayed by the leadership, that they would allow other bargaining-unit employees to suffer while they gain reward,” she said.
But it’s clear that side issues like union solidarity are not bothering the Border Patrol council, which is in its glory now.
Unions from around the country, for example, have supported striking Asarco mine workers, donating around $80,000 and collecting food and other supplies. But even though many border agents live in the Sahuarita area, side-by-side with striking Asarco workers who work at the Mission Mine, the strikers have received no direct support from the Border Patrol union.
The Border Patrol union leaders placed their faith in Trump, even when it hurt the membership in the short term during the shutdown, and they are reaping the benefits of their loyalty — for now.
