Congress OKs Border Patrol pay system reform

Wednesday, Sens. Jon Tester and John McCain’s bill to reform the way in which Border Patrol employees get paid was unanimously passed at the U.S. House.

Once the bill is signed by President Barack Obama, the pay system will be changed. According to a press release from the senators, the bill will reform the “complicated and inefficient overtime pay system and holds the Border Patrol more accountable for how it spends taxpayer money.”

The bill is slated to save up to $100 million in taxpayers’ money a year.

“This is a very good law,” said U.S. Border Patrol Havre Sector’s Chief Christopher Richards. “It saves the American taxpayer dollars, it provides fair compensation for agents working beyond their regularly scheduled workday, and it provides the workforce the needed flexibility to accomplish the mission of securing our nation’s border.”

The bill was created after a government report showed Homeland Security employees were abusing their pay rates by taking too much overtime pay. The bill will allow Border Patrol agents to choose between three pay schedule options: 100 hours that includes 20 hours of overtime per pay period, 90 hours with 10 hours of overtime and 80 hours with no overtime.

The vice president of Havre Local 2913, Andrew Herdina, said in a press release from the Havre Border Patrol that the bill is a “win-win situation” for everybody.

In addition to saving tax money, “it will also give the men and women of the Border Patrol the stability in their pay that has been missing in recent years,” Herdina said.

Depending on how many overtime hours agents were claiming, some of them will take a loss in their paychecks. However, 80 percent of Border Patrol agents will have to work the 100-hour pay period, 10 percent will be working the second tier pay plan and 10 percent of agents will work the 80-hour pay period with no overtime.

Melissa Hart, a Havre Border Patrol agent and the public information officer for the Havre sector, said at deadline that the details on how the Border Patrol agents will be separated into the pay plans is uncertain, but such decisions are usually seniority-based. She said the separation will be made in order to maintain the agent on the border and continue their mission-based goals.

Hart said for the Border Patrol for the Havre sector, this change in policy will make the agency more efficient because now administrators will be better able to schedule employees and there will always be someone on the border, whereas before there was not a way to schedule agents working overtime.