Fort Hancock, TX - March 2019: US Customs and Border protection station. DHS has missed staffing targets at CBP for years due to multiple factors. Image: Katherine Welles/Shutterstock.com
In one of the widest uses of retention payments to date, Customs and Border Protection is offering a 5 percent of salary incentive to agents at GS-12 and -13. The payments, worked out in negotiations with the National Border Patrol Council, will require a 12-month service agreement and will be made in quarterly installments, starting to accrue as soon as June and will be made as soon as September.
Staffing at CBP has fallen under targets for years due to difficulties on the recruitment and retention ends, related to the intertwined issues of the difficulty of the work, the remote location of many stations and salary levels. The agency has been unable to accommodate the administration’s call for an increase in staffing.
Retention incentives, along with recruitment and relocation incentives, most commonly are used in the science, technology, engineering and math fields and in cybersecurity, although agencies have broad authority to use them for any field in which they have shortages of employees with needed skills and experience.