(Washington, DC)—The American Federation of Government Employees, AFL-CIO, (AFGE) recently won a major decision in the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit involving the calculation of military leave used by federal civilian employees who belong(ed) to the national guard and reserves. Butterbaugh v. Department of Justice, 336 F.3d 1332 (Fed. Cir. 2003).
The federal government mischarged military leave for its civilian employees, as noted above, from 1980. The government claims to have stopped this illegal practice of charging leave days for non-work days in the year 2000. Prior to 2000, all federal Agencies had included days on which employees were not scheduled to work (e.g. weekends and holidays) when calculating how much military leave employees took. This practice (charging military leave for days otherwise not worked by the federal employee in their civilian job) was declared illegal by the Court.
To be eligible to file a claim, employees must meet all three conditions below:
1. A federal civilian employee during some period of time between 1980 and the end of 2000, and;
2. A member of the reserve or National Guard, and;
3. Attended reserve or National Guard training while employed as a federal civilian employee.
AFGE has designed a website to allow federal employees (current or past) who were erroneously charged military leave to make a claim for leave correction with their Agency. Persons can initiate a claim by logging on to http://www.afge.org/MilitaryLeave/.