TRUMP PAYS OFF BORDER PATROL UNION
The December 16th Washington Post reported that the President finally paid off the National Border Patrol Council (NBPC) for breaking with virtually every other federal employee union in the 2016 election to support his campaign. Even though Trump imposed on all the unions that did not support him executive orders limiting union official time to one hour a year per unit employee, The Post reported that the president leaned on Border Patrol management to triple the number of official time hours the Border Patrol Council had under the old contract. We estimate that equates to about 5 hours a year per unit employee—rather than the one hour a year to which he has limited all other unions. Those repressive executive orders also stripped a lot of protections from the average federal employee. Here is the Washington Post article. The Border Patrol Council has chosen to not post a copy of its new agreement on its web site yet for all other unions to read. Let’s hope that some union can use this information to build a case that the President has acted in an arbitrary and capricious manner to exempt this union from the orders that apply to all others.