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The agencies charged with protecting the careers of millions of civilians called to active duty in the National Guard and Reserves are hampered by incompatible data systems and a reliance on paper files, the Government Accountability Office found in a recent report.

The Defense, Labor and Justice departments, and the Office of Special Counsel --- the agencies responsible for ensuring that private businesses comply with the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act -- are slow in responding to complaints, in part because they have incompatible case-tracking systems, GAO said.

The Labor and Defense departments are responsible for informing service members and employers of their rights and obligations under USERRA, and complaints are filed through Labor and OSC. Unresolved complaints are referred to the Justice Department or OSC.

According to the report (GAO-06-60), it is difficult to be certain whether USERRA compliance has improved. But data collected by the enforcement agencies provides some insight into case processing, GAO said.

The auditors found that agencies measure the time it takes to process a complaint, but not the actual time that service members wait for their complaints to be fully addressed. GAO looked at 52 complaints that had been reopened two or more times and discovered that the recorded processing times averaged 103 days, but the actual times that service members waited was 619 days.

The 86-page report to Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., recommends that the Pentagon survey service members to learn more about their experiences with USERRA complaints.

GAO also urged the Defense Department to share employer information from its database with the other USERRA enforcement agencies, and said that procedures or systems should be built to allow the electronic transmission of complaint information.

Congress should consider appointing a single person or office to oversee the entire USERRA complaint resolution process, GAO said. This would encourage agencies to focus on results rather than simply producing information, the report said.

With the exception of the Justice Department, which did not comment on a draft of the report, the agencies reviewed by GAO all generally agreed with the recommendations.

Special Counsel Scott Bloch said that OSC has dramatically quickened case processing and has received more than a hundred cases as part of a demonstration project announced in February. That project allows the agency to investigate a certain number of cases itself rather than waiting to prosecute them until after the Labor Department's Veterans Employment and Training Service has performed an investigation.

Of the one hundred or so cases in the demonstration project, roughly 57 were closed in fiscal 2005, and of those, 17 obtained corrective action, Bloch said.

According to Bloch, it has taken as long as two years just for OSC to receive cases from the Veterans' Employment and Training Service.

Proper Grooming

The Customs and Border Protection Bureau violated a national labor agreement when it set standards for personal appearance that included a ban on beards and restrictions on hair color and mustache length, an arbitrator recently ruled.

The Homeland Security Department agency failed to meet its bargaining obligations with the National Treasury Employees Union when it implemented the grooming regulations in October 2004, independent arbitrator M. David Vaughn wrote in a 23-page decision issued earlier this month.

Despite the ruling, the dress code will remain intact pending the outcome of a related Federal Labor Relations Agency proceeding, which will address a request for CBP to negotiate with the union over the specifics of proposed grooming standards.

Grooming standards are essential for successfully merging the entities that make up CBP, a CBP spokesman said. The bureau's counsel is reviewing the arbitrator's decision and is considering an appeal.

NTEU President Colleen Kelley said unilateral workplace orders have contributed to low morale at CBP. Criticizing the agency for focusing on "trivial pursuits," Kelley said that the agency's reasoning regarding the dress code was not based on real-life work experiences.

She said NTEU objects to the new grooming standards not only because they are "unnecessary and unreasonable," but because the agency tried to impose them "without fulfilling its legal obligation to bargain these issues first." NTEU represents 14,000 CBP employees.

The personal appearance standards were written by James Hynes, the director of field operations at CBP's New Orleans field office, with the help of a staff member, Vaughn noted in his ruling. The standards covered allowable: sideburn length; use of cosmetics; wristwatch style; types of sunglass bands; and size and number of rings, earrings, body piercings and tattoos.

U.S. Bureau of Customs and Border Protection, Department of Homeland Security and National Treasury Employees Union before M. David Vaughn, Arbitrator 340-2004-00589X, Oct. 14, 2005.

COMMENTS

• At the beginning of the article it states: "The Customs and Border Protection Bureau violated a national agreement standards for personal appearance that included a ban on beards and restrictions on hair color and mustache length, an arbitrator recently ruled." The article went on to state that the personal appearance standards were written by James Hynes, the director of operations at CBP's New Orleans field office. The national agreement was violated, but a federal law was also violated. In most cases violating a federal law is a criminal act. The federal law was violated by Mr. Hynes, as stated in the article. So why is it that all articles and statements are "the agency did this or the agency did that?" Why are all federal managers exempted from following federal laws, rules and regulations? The agency didn't violate the law, Mr. Hynes did. If federal managers were held accountable for their actions, and inactions, we would not need all this constant reorganization! GovExec.com reader Posted November 3, 2005 3:21 PM
• Neither these agencies nor the Congress obviously intend for the laws to be complied with by agencies or the government. Take a look at the cases processed by the MSPB. They rule rarely for the veteran and have even bragged that 95 percent of the cases they hear are ruled on behalf of the agencies. By the time they throw in the laws concerning VRA, VEOA, and others, they have confused the process so badly that no one can understand what happened. The whole system is a joke. Take the MSPB out of the system and stop allowing it to decide these cases. Make these agencies comply with the law and fire the managers who violate these laws. They know what they are doing and agencies like MSPB are just condoning it. It is a legal game and nothing more, and the vets suffer for it. This crap has been going on for years and no one wants to clean it up or so it seems. Fire them and show they had better clean it up or lose their jobs and careers. It will soon clean itself up. Watch and see. Charlie (retired military) Posted October 28, 2005 12:12 PM