Nearly All Furlough Appeals Rejected

MSPB recently reported that it has worked its way through about 70 percent of the more than 32,000 furlough appeals filed in response to the spring and summer 2013 furloughs caused by sequestration. Of those processed, about 20 percent were dismissed for a variety of reasons including for lack of jurisdiction or timeliness or because they were voluntarily withdrawn. Of the remainder, the agency action was affirmed in 99.5 percent of the cases at the hearing officer level. Those cases mainly involve individuals who successfully argued that their positions should have been among those exempt from being furloughed due to being funded from a source not subject to sequestration, or for other reasons. MSPB early on established that it would not second-guess management’s decision to use furloughs as a cost-saving measure, leaving little surprise regarding the outcome of the large majority of cases. Nonetheless, more than 2,200 appeals of the hearing officer decisions have been filed at the full board.