Asbestos Policy Changed for Wage Grade Employees

The Office of Personnel Management has published interim rules to carry out a 2003 law that amended the environmental differential pay authority for prevailing rate employees to require that any entitlement determination concerning exposure to asbestos must be consistent with permissible exposure limits set by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. This essentially applied the same standards to environmental differential pay as already applied to hazardous duty pay for white-collar employees for asbestos exposure at work—in many cases a stricter standard than had been applied previously to environmental differential pay. The rules were published in the April 27 Federal Register and are effective as of that date.