CA-7 Delays: Don’t Tolerate Them
ATTENTION ALL CARRIERS THAT HAVE FILED A CLAIM TO OWCP. Once you receive a Development Letter, YOU MUST CONTACT ME IMMEDIATELY. Call 631-789-1616 so we can review your claim to determine what you need to do in order to help get your case approved. Failure to contact me could result in your claim being denied.
Last month I wrote about CA-7’s and the necessity for the form to be filled out for claiming wage loss compensation and that the Post Office has 5 working days to complete the form after receipt from the employee. It has come to the Unions attention that some of the forms are being delayed in processing. The CA- 7 is the form letter carriers fill out that suffer an on the job injury and are unable to work their assignment and are not provided limited duty work. Injured workers are required to submit Form CA-7 to the Postal Service. Legal and contractual provisions place strict time requirements on the Postal Service to process and forward the CA-7’s to the office of Workers Compensation. CA-7 delays by the Postal Service necessarily delay receipt of compensation by the injured workers. Therefore, if you determine that the form was delayed you should contact your Shop Steward and Full Time Officer about a possible grievance, don’t tolerate the delay.
The legal requirement is clear. Implementing regulations of the Federal Employees Compensation Act (FECA) at 20 CFR 10.111©;
Upon receipt of Form CA-7 from the employee, or someone acting on his or her behalf, the employer shall complete the appropriate portions of the form. As soon as possible, but no more than five working days after receipt from the employee, the employer shall forward the completed CA-7 and any accompanying medical report to OWCP.
Postal Service regulations are similarly unambiguous. The Employee Labor Manual (ELM) Section 545.82(d):
The control office or control point forwards the completed Form CA-7 and any other accompanying medical reports to OWCP within 5 working days upon receipt from the employee.
ELM Section 545.812
If the disability is a result of an occupational disease or illness, a From CA-7 is completed and submitted to OWCP not more than 5 working days upon receipt from the employee.
ELM Section 545.12:
Control point personnel must not under any circumstances or for any reason delay timely submission of reports or claim forms to the control office.
The above regulatory language is severe in its clarity. The Postal Service has five working days after receipt of a CA-7 to complete and forward it to OWCP. There is no ambiguity. OWCP tracks the CA-7 timeliness performance of all federal agencies and publishes the results on the internet. On the whole, the Postal Service has achieved marked improvements in recent years. The latest OWCP quarterly data indicates the Postal Service CA-7 failure rate was almost 13 %. This compares favorably to previous years where the percentages were higher.
The improvement most likely is due to Postal Service Headquarters initiative, explained at an OWCP interagency meeting in 2005. The Postal Service program includes 1) a tracking system to record when a CA-1, CA-2 or CA-7 is received by the Supervisor, received at USPS injury compensation offices (ICCO’s) and received by OWCP, 2) national timeliness goals set by the chief operating officer: CA-1 and CA-2, 85 percent minimum, and CA-7, 70 percent minimum; 3) required written reports by the responsible manager explaining the failure whenever a timeliness failure occurs; 4) incorporation of the timeliness measurements into the management pay for performance criteria; 5) use of OWCP time lag reports on the internet to measure success/ failure.
The Postal Service linking their program to the timely submission of CA-7’s to Managers bonuses almost guarantees overall improvements.
Unfortunately some local managers are attempting to meet the Postal Service timeliness goals using methods that violate the regulations quoted above. The NALC has received reports that some ICCO’s are returning submitted CA-7’s to injured workers. In some cases, the CA-7’s are returned with instructions to resubmit a new CA-7 with a new signature line date due to the original CA-7 signature line preceded receipt by the Injury Compensation Control Office (ICCO) by a number of days not to their liking. In other cases, the CA-7’s are returned with instructions to attach TAC’s Reports and resubmit a new CA-7 with a new signature line date. In some instances the carriers have been instructed by managers to place a later date than the actual date the form is being sent out enabling management extra days to process the form to stay within their required time frame .
Postal managers benefit from these actions at the expense of the injured workers. They reap increased pay for performance due to OWCP will not know about the original CA-7 or that the carrier was instructed to placed a later date on the form and therefore, record receipt of the CA-7 as timely when in fact it was not timely filed. Injured workers, on the other hand, suffer delayed OWCP compensation payments.
If an injured employee has been instructed to fill out a new CA-7 and submit a new date or if the carrier has been instructed to write a later date the brother/ sister should advise their steward and they can contact the Full Time Officer to possibly file a grievance.
Nothing in the FECA or its implementing regulations permits the Postal Service to fail to forward a CA-7 to OWCP by returning it to the employee and insisting on a new submission with a new date. The Postal Service has no such agreement with OWCP.
CA-7’s are important and Letter Carriers need to be aware of the above regulations regarding them, complying with these regulations, and requiring management to comply with them.
