OPM proposes new leave policies for pandemics, family care

The Office of Personnel Management proposed regulations on Wednesday that would make it easier for federal employees to take time off to care for family members who have been exposed to dangerous communicable diseases or wounded in combat.

"It's a very generous federal benefit, and it's one that makes us a model employer," Jerome Mikowicz, deputy associate director of the Center for Pay and Leave Administration at OPM, said of the communicable disease benefit.

Currently, federal employees can use sick leave to care for a family member who health authorities have barred from work because of a communicable illness that could endanger other people at their workplace.

That change, published in the Federal Register on Wednesday, would broaden the circumstances under which federal employees can use sick time to care for a family member with a communicable disease. It would include relatives who have been exposed to, but not yet diagnosed with, a dangerous illness like H1N1 flu. To be eligible for this benefit, an employee must provide evidence that a health official determined it would be dangerous for the person they would care for to be out in the community.

The proposed regulations would allow agencies to advance 30 days of sick leave to employees if they are diagnosed with or exposed to a communicable disease, and 13 days if they need to care for a family member under similar circumstances. Federal employees would owe the government that leave, but the benefit would make it easier to take time off when public health is at stake.

Mikowicz acknowledged federal agencies could have been better prepared for the fall flu season and an expected resurgence of H1N1 if regulations governing sick leave use and advances had been in place earlier. But he noted the need for a comment period, saying OPM would move to put a final regulation in place "as fast as we can."

The proposed regulations would allow agencies to advance leave under certain other circumstances as well. Employees can receive advance leave for medical, dental or optical care procedures, or to handle the issues related to a family member's death or attend a funeral.

The sick leave regulations are packaged with a proposed regulation that would allow employees to take 26 weeks of family and medical leave during a 12-month period to care for a family member who contracted an illness or was seriously wounded while on active-duty with the military. That regulation would enforce provisions in the fiscal 2008 Defense authorization act, which took effect when the Labor Department published its final regulation in November 2008. But Mikowicz said the OPM regulation would make it clearer and easier for human resources officials to grant the leave under those circumstances.

The comment period for both sets of regulations opens the door to a wider review of OPM policies under the Family and Medical Leave Act.

"We are asking agencies for their recommendations on what significant changes, if any, are needed within the existing OPM FMLA regulatory framework," Mikowicz wrote in the Federal Register notice.