Customs warned on cutting overtime pay

Cutting overtime pay at the U.S. Customs Service would hinder the agency's ability to carry out its core functions, according to a new General Accounting Office study.

In the report, "Customs Service: Effects of Proposed Legislation on Officers' Pay" (GAO-01-304), GAO found that legislation introduced in the 106th Congress would adversely affect the Customs Service by taking away overtime pay and reducing the number of overtime hours a Customs officer could work.

Under the bill, H.R. 1833, overtime pay policies at Customs would be adjusted to match those of other federal agencies. The legislation could be reintroduced in the 107th Congress.

GAO studied five of the 332 Customs locations and found that nearly all employees who got overtime pay in fiscal 1999 would have taken home less money under H.R. 1833. More than 80 percent of the $13.5 million in overtime pay at Customs was concentrated in six shifts.

Under the proposed legislation, Customs officers "would be performing the same work, within the same time frames, and receive less money for that work," said Colleen Kelley, president of the National Treasury Employees Union, which represents Customs employees.

Congress made significant changes to the Customs compensation system in 1993, focusing on how the agency could schedule employees based on traffic patterns. To keep adequate staffing at the Customs Service, Kelley said, appropriators need to provide enough money for the agency to do its job.

"Trade has almost doubled, passenger traffic has increased by 50 percent, but the Customs staff hasn't," said Kelley. "Some of the work that needs to be done is not getting done."

In December, Congress gave Customs $130 million to modernize its aging computer system, which has long suffered from brownouts where the system becomes all but inoperable due to high demand for its services.