Your Pro-Rated Annual Leave

Now and then I get members calling me up about their annual leave balance has declined and that they did not use any annual leave during the pay period.  When I questioned them about it, they tell me that they were in a LWOP status during the year.  Or a recent retiree calls me to tell me that they received an invoice from OPM that they owe the USPS monies for annual leave they used while working during the beginning of the year but retired during the middle of the year.  This article I am writing has to do with full-time regular carriers not PTF’s or CCA’s because regular letter carriers receive their annual leave in advance at the beginning of the calendar year they don’t have to earn or accumulate it by working first like PTF’s or CCA’s.

First of all, the amount of annual leave you earn has not changed according to the ELM section 512.31 it states: 512.311 Full-Time Employees The following provisions concern full time employees:

Accrual Chart. Full-time career employees earn annual leave based on their number of creditable years of service as follows:

Table 1: Table 1 is valid only for Career bargaining employees:

 Leave Category:      Creditable Service:                          Maximum Leave Per Year:

         4                        Less than 3 years              4 hours for each full biweekly pay period, i.e., 104 hours          

                                                                                (13 days) per 26–period leave year.

         6                        3 years but less                6 hours for each full biweekly pay period plus 4 hours in last   

                                    than 15 years                    full pay period in calendar year, i.e., 160 hours (20 days) per

                                                                                26–period leave year.

         8                       15 years or more              8 hours for each full biweekly pay period, i.e., 208 hours (26

                                                                               days) per 26–period leave year.

As a full time, regular employee, you are given upfront the annual leave that the postal service is required to give you for the year but that annual leave is on the assumption that you will be working the entire year.  So, what that means is the balance of annual leave that you receive at the beginning of the year is not really yours till you work the time to get credit for that annual leave.      

For a letter carrier with 15 years or more service for every 80 hours of LWOP management will deduct 8 hours of annual leave from your balance if you have a balance.  For letter carriers with 3 years but less than 15 years for every 80 hours of LWOP management will deduct 6 hours of annual leave from your balance if you have a balance.  For regular letter carriers with less than 3 years of service for every 80 hours of LWOP management will deduct 4 hours of annual leave from your balance if you have a balance.  If you don’t have an annual leave balance because you already used up the entire annual leave you were allotted for the year management will issue you a letter of demand to recoup their money that they gave you in your paycheck when you used annual leave but didn’t work to accumulate it.    

The same thing goes for senior letter carriers that use their 208 annual leave hours by April or May and want to retire during that summer, they will get an invoice from OPM stating that they owe the postal service monies for the annual leave they used and did not accumulate because they retired before the end of the year.   

So make sure that you know how to manage your annual leave so that you don’t fall into this issue of owing the Postal Service money because you used annual leave that you didn’t earn yet.       

Remember this is only for annual leave; the postal service does not credit you with advanced sick leave like they do with annual leave, you have to work to accumulate sick leave.

Be safe, stay strong, wear a mask!