Quiz: What Happens to Pay and Benefits During a Shutdown?

• By Eric Katz
• September 26, 2013
• comments

Breaking: The federal government could be heading toward a shutdown.

OK, so it may not come as a surprise to anyone that Congress has until 11:59 p.m. on Monday to strike a deal to fund the government, or else agencies will have to shutter their doors. What you may not know, however, are all the details of what a shutdown means for you.

Think you know it all? We’ve put together this quiz for you to test your knowledge. You can find a link to the answers at the bottom.

1)      True or false: A majority of federal employees will stay home on Tuesday if there is a shutdown.

2)      Why are non-furloughed employees sometimes referred to as “excepted” and sometimes referred to as “exempted”?

3)      Will excepted and exempted employees receive their pay as scheduled?

4)      Will furloughed employees receive their pay as scheduled?

5)      Can employees use paid leave instead of taking an unpaid furlough day?

6)      What about unemployment compensation?

7)      Columbus Day is around the corner. Will employees at least get paid for that? 

8)      Will employees receive their paycheck for the pay period immediately prior to the shutdown?

9)      Can employees earn ...

Military Community Feels the Effects of Furloughs, Too

• By Kellie Lunney
• September 19, 2013
• comments

Washington is in the grips of yet another potential government shutdown and a showdown over raising the debt limit. The sequester almost seems like old news.

Almost, but not quite, unfortunately.

Fiscal 2013 sequester-related furloughs might be over and done with, but unpaid leave for even more federal employees in fiscal 2014 is a certainty unless Congress replaces the automatic budget cuts. The FBI said last week that it would shut down for 10 agency-wide furlough days if sequestration continues as expected in the next fiscal year. The Defense Department, which furloughed more than 650,000 of its civilian employees for six days in fiscal 2013, announced it might have to lay off civilian workers if the budget cuts remain in place.

It’s hard to start thinking about what could happen in fiscal 2014, though, when you’re still reeling from this past spring and summer.

And it’s not just civilian feds who were affected by the sequester.

Seventy-two percent of middle-class military families with annual household incomes of at least $50,000 said they were adversely affected by the furloughs of civilian Defense workers, a recent survey found. Service members were exempt from furlough, but they depend ...

Flu Shots Fall Victim to the Sequester

• By Eric Katz
• September 12, 2013
• comments

Early October marks the beginning of flu season.

For thousands of civilians in the Air Force, this could be a stuffy, fever-y couple of months. Due to budget constraints, the Air Force will no longer offer free influenza shots to non-military employees. In 2012, about 12,000 civilians received the free flu vaccines.

For the past two years, Air Force Materiel Command has provided flu shots for all employees free of charge. Approximately 20 percent of the civilian workforce took advantage of the program. Now, only TRICARE beneficiaries will receive the free shots. The Air Force will instead invest in programs like the Civilian Health Promotion Services, which provide health education classes and screening programs.

"In the past, [Air Force Materiel Command] has offered both the flu vaccine and wellness programs because civilian health and wellness is an important factor that supports our command mission," Col. James King, the AFMC command surgeon, told the AFMC public affairs office. "Unfortunately, limited resources required us to prioritize and ultimately fund broader health programs that provide more resources for the total health of our civilian workforce."

The Air Force is encouraging civilians not covered by TRICARE to “contact their private health care providers ...

Double Furlough Trouble for Feds

• By Kellie Lunney
• September 5, 2013
• comments

Labor Day marks the traditional, if not official, end of summer. It also means a new fiscal year is less than a month away, and so is the threat of more furloughs for federal employees.

Congress for the last few years has lurched from one government funding deadline to another, and the federal workforce has lived under the shutdown shadow since 2011. Then in March 2013, automatic, across-the-board budget cuts took effect, forcing some agencies to place employees on unpaid leave.

This fall the circumstances are a little different because feds are facing the possibility of two types of furloughs simultaneously starting Oct. 1: furloughs related to sequestration, and those caused by a government shutdown because Congress has yet to pass any appropriations bills or a continuing resolution. And then there’s the mid-October deadline for raising the debt ceiling, which is a whole other story.

Yep, summer’s over alright. Don’t make any Columbus Day plans.

It’s not likely that the government will shutter in the next few weeks. Republican and Democratic leaders in both chambers are dead set against it, and lawmakers have to vote right after recess on whether the military should intervene in Syria ...

OPM: Your Health Benefits Are Safe Under Obamacare

• By Eric Katz
• August 29, 2013
• comments

The Obama administration wants the federal workforce to know about Obamacare.

The Office of Personnel Management has issued a memorandum to federal agencies to explain the new health insurance marketplace -- created by Obama’s landmark health care legislation, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, or ACA for short -- and the tools it has made available to educate federal employees about its effects.

OPM has distributed a Q-and-A to each agency’s chief human capital officer to “address concerns [their] employees may have about the impact of ACA on the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program.”

The main takeaway? You can keep your FEHBP coverage, and it will exceed “minimum essential coverage” required by the law.

In fact, for the most part, federal employees will not really see many changes at all when the health insurance marketplace opens Oct. 1. Some of the other marquee provisions of the bill, however, do apply to feds’ FEHBP coverage.

For example, children can stay on a parent’s plan up to age 26, OPM said, and annual and lifetime dollar limits and exclusions for pre-existing conditions have been eliminated for FEHBP enrollees. One relevant ACA provision -- the opening of FEHBP coverage to employees of ...