The Congressional Budget Office estimated a $16 billion cost over five years from extending the paid leave authority to FMLA-covered purposes beyond parental leave. Image: Kwangmoozaa/Shutterstock.com
By: FEDweek StaffBills to enhance paid leave for federal employees and cost-of-living adjustments under the FERS retirement system have been reintroduced after falling short of enactment in the prior Congress, although they face even longer odds in this Congress with Republicans in control of the House.
One bill (HR-856 and S-274) would allow paid leave, rather than unpaid leave, for all purposes covered by the Family and Medical Leave Act. That law provides for up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave per 12 months for parental or personal or family medical reasons; since 2020 federal employees have been eligible for paid time for up to the full 12 weeks for parental purposes but not for the other purposes.
Similar legislation advanced through the House oversight committee in 2021 on a party-line vote but stalled after the Congressional Budget Office estimated a $16 billion cost over five years from extending the paid leave authority to FMLA-covered purposes beyond parental leave. Those purposes would include a personal serious health condition; caring for a spouse, child or parent with such a condition; and for purposes arising from a personal call to active duty military service or such a call for those family members.
The Biden administration recently urged agencies to provide unpaid leave for FMLA-covered purposes even to employees who have not yet served one year and are not covered by that law. It also previewed an upcoming policy to encourage use of paid or unpaid leave related to seeking safety and recovering from domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, or stalking.
The reintroduced bill (HR-866) on COLA benefits would bring the FERS formula up to the level of the CSRS system for inflation adjustments. Under CSRS, COLAs are payable at any age and are for the full amount indicated by the inflation index used to set COLAs in Social Security and several other programs.
Under FERS, however, retirees aren’t eligible for COLAs until age 62 unless they retired due to disability or under special retirement provisions that mainly affect law enforcement officers, firefighters and air traffic controllers. Also, if the inflation index amount is above 3 percent, FERS retirees eligible for COLAs receive 1 percentage point less, and if it is between 2 and 3 percent, they receive a flat 2 percent.
Federal employee organization support both the leave and COLA proposals, as they did with other bills recently introduced to repeal the “government pension offset” and “windfall elimination provision” offsets against Social Security benefits for CSRS system retirees and a bill to base COLAs on an inflation index specifically tracking costs for retirees that typically produces higher indicated increases than the currently used index.
Also reintroduced was a bipartisan bill (S-311) designed to address an issue related to future retirement benefits for certain CBP officers that in some cases can result in lower benefits than were intended when the special law enforcement retirement provisions were extended to those positions in 2008.
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