Fedweek

The MSPB is nearly finished processing appeals of the 2013 unpaid furloughs due to sequestration, having worked through 97 percent of some 32,000 such cases as of the end of January. Almost all the appeals that were not withdrawn or dismissed for technical reasons were decided on the merits rather than settled–in comparison with other types of cases, where settlements are very common. Of those, the agency action was upheld in 99 percent. MSPB early on set a precedent that management’s decisions to furlough were due deference as a reasonable reaction to the budgetary limits. That essentially rejected from the start the argument, raised by unions that encouraged their members to file the appeals, that agencies should have looked elsewhere instead. The few MSPB decisions in favor of employees mainly involved being incorrectly left out of those exempt from the furloughs for reasons such as safety or health considerations. The more than 25,300 cases decided at the hearing officer level in fiscal 2015–almost 20,000 of them furlough-related–was a record and up by more than half over 2014. At the board level more than 2,100 of the 2,900 appeals process involved furlough decisions.