Many employees have built up large balances of unused annual leave. Image: kostasgr/Shutterstock.com
By: FEDweek StaffOPM has extended the authority agencies have to waive use-or-lose annual leave provisions for their employees who are unable, for reasons related to the pandemic, to use the amount of leave they would need to avoid forfeiting the excess.
A notice in the March 14 Federal Register notes that the authority, first granted in 2020, would otherwise have expired ahead of the May 11 date that the White House has said it will lift the national emergency and health emergency designations. The interim rules, effective as of that date, also broaden the circumstances in which the waiver can apply, going beyond work directly in response to the pandemic to also include a related “ongoing exigency.”
Said the notice: “Regardless of the anticipated termination date of the national emergency regarding the COVID-19 pandemic, there are also anticipated continuing significant workload implications for certain categories of employees at certain agencies, such as the Department of Veterans Affairs. Such agencies may also be dealing with lingering effects, such as the fact that many employees built up large balances of unused annual leave, which if used quickly would result in challenges in meeting current workload demands.”
It added that agencies “will need to implement procedures to determine whether they will authorize an ongoing exigency and, if they do so, to make determinations as to which employees will be covered by such ongoing exigency for purposes of utilizing the restored annual leave authorities under this rule. Further, once covered employees are identified, agencies will need to communicate to those employees that they are subject to the authorities in this rule and that the advance scheduling requirement does not apply to them.”
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