On the heels of a General Accounting Office report showing that employees who leave the government with the same rates of pay and the same amounts of unused leave do not always receive the same amount of lump-sum leave pay, the Office of Personnel Management on Tuesday issued proposed regulations to create a governmentwide policy on lump-sum leave.
Discrepancies in the way different agencies calculate leave payments have led to several lawsuits in recent years. In 1995 the Justice Department settled with 696 former federal employees for lump-sum back pay totaling about $570,000.
Many discrepancies arose because agencies did not include the same types of pay when calculating the final lump-sum leave payments. OPM's proposed regulations would create a consistent policy for such calculations.
Under the proposed regulations, lump-sum leave payments would be based on:
- Basic pay.
- System-wide pay increases, such as COLAs, or wage adjustments for prevailing rate employees, that go into effect while the employee still works for the government or while the employee is collecting his or her lump-sum leave after leaving the civil service.
- Within-grade increases.
- Annual premium pay for standby duty, annual premium pay for administratively uncontrollable overtime, certain overtime pay, and availability pay for criminal investigators.
- Night pay and Sunday premium pay for certain employees.
The proposals appeared in Tuesday's Federal Register. OPM is accepting comments on the regulations until Sept. 29.
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