On Monday, June 6, 2016, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) will be publishing a proposed rule that would provide additional leave for some federal employees.
The Wounded Warriors Federal Leave Act of 2015 establishes a new leave category. It will be called “disabled veteran leave.” This leave would be available during a 12-month period beginning on the first day of employment for an employee who is a veteran with a service connected disability rated at 30 percent or more for purposes of undergoing medical treatment for the disability.
The use of this leave would not exceed 104 hours for a regular full-time employee. Disabled veteran leave that is not used during the 12-month period could not be carried over into subsequent years and would be lost. The disabled veteran leave category would only be available to eligible federal employees hired on or after November 5, 2016.
Deleting Remnants of the Y2 Computer Glitch Bug
Way back in 1999, there was grave concern about what would happen to various computer programs when the calendar showed 2000 instead of 1999. Some referred to this event as the Year 2000 Computer Programming Scare. The fear of chaos existed because most dates in computers were programmed to assume a new year began with “19” instead of “20”. When the new year was to turn from December 31, 1999 to January 1, 2000, some experts were predicting computers would be confused and that they would shut down. That did not happen, at least on a large scale.
There are still remnants of the Y2 fears in the Code of Federal Regulations. OPM is therefore proposing to rescind a provision pertaining to the scheduling of annual leave by employees as a result of the Year 2000 computer conversion efforts.
The regulations at 5 CFR 630.310 provided that the problem of computer conversion efforts were an “exigency of the public business” for the purpose of restoring annual leave to an employee who forfeited annual leave at the beginning of leave year 2000 after a federal agency concluded an employee’s services were required during the Year 2000 computer conversion.
The exigency of the public business for Year 2000 computer conversion efforts ended on January 31, 2000. So, some 16 years later, we can rest assured the problem is no longer with us so this provision on forfeiture of annual leave for that problem is now being edited out of existence.
Proposed Rule on Additional for Some Disabled Veterans
