The Back Pay Act, enacted in 1966, provides for back pay awards if an agency is found to have taken, or have failed to take, certain personnel actions and pay actions. Image: GAS-photo/Shutterstock.com
By: FEDweek StaffOPM has withdrawn rules it proposed in 2020, but never finalized, to narrow the situations in which federal employees are eligible for back pay awards.
Some comments received in response to that notice “raised significant legal and policy concerns with the proposal. The comments received raised a number of issues that warrant further attention and suggest that OPM should further assess the best regulatory approach,” OPM said in the July 15 Federal Register.
OPM added that it “continues to consider the best means of addressing some or all of the issues addressed” in that proposal.
Those issues centered mainly on the impact of court rulings and changes in law since the Back Pay Act was enacted in 1966. That law provides for back pay awards if an agency is found to have taken, or have failed to take, certain personnel actions and pay actions.
The proposed rules would have specified that the covered actions include only appointments, a prohibited personnel practice, an action based on performance or conduct, any other removal or suspension, a promotion or demotion, a change in step or grade, a transfer or reassignment, or a change from full-time to part-time work.
They would have specifically excluded other actions that could affect an employee’s pay such as debt collections, improper overtime payments, rejections for cash awards, leave denials, or denials of official time for union representatives.
The rules also would have limited payments of attorney’s fees to an employee’s “personal representative” to the executor or administrator of a deceased employee’s estate—excluding, for example, union representatives.
In a separate notice of the same day, OPM also withdrew rules it had proposed last year to revise the procedures for determining whether an individual’s failure to register with the Selective Service System was “knowing and willful” for purposes of federal employment eligibility.
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