MSPB Facing Growing Workload

MSPB’s recent annual report noted that even if there are no more of sequestration furloughs—and there’s no guarantee there won’t be, although apparently not at least until after 2015—several trends in the federal workforce could lead more employees to file appeals in the time ahead. One factor is the increasing proportion of employees who are eligible for retirement; MSPB has jurisdiction over certain retirement benefits-related disputes. “Changes to federal retirement programs, such as increasing the level of employees’ contributions to fund their annuities or changing the calculations for annuities (such as basing annuities on the average high five years instead of the average high three years), especially for current retirement-eligible employees, could lead to a surge in retirements, followed by a surge in retirement appeals to MSPB,” it said. Further, retiring employees generally will be replaced by much less experienced persons, and “historical information indicates that less experienced employees typically have more appealable actions taken against them than do more experienced employees.”