Q. My first federal employment was in 1/17/1983 as a temporary worker (NTE one year, 40 hour week). Since it was a temp position. only Social Security was assessed. I left for the private sector 9/21/1983 due to an impending RIF knowing full well we were the first to go. I then received and accepted an offer from the Postal Service and started 10/13/1984 ; I am still there. I was informed that there will be a new retirement system, but no one has any information on the details, so I was placed as CSRS Interim. FERS then became law and the CSRS Interim folks were sucked into FERS, like it or not. If the CSRS Interim folks were hired before FERS became law, then why were they not treated the same as CSRS Offset?
A. CSRS Offfset was a category assigned to former CSRS employees with five years of CSRS service who had returned to government service after being separated for at least one year. Because you did not meet that definition, you were covered by CSRS Interim. Since you did not have five years of CSRS service before FERS became law, you were automatically transferred to FERS. Because CSRS Offset employees had five years of CSRS service, they were given a choice.
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I resigned from the Postal Service in 2005 with 490 hours of sick leave. I stared working for Department of Homeland Security in 2013. I have tried to contact OPM to see if I could get my sick leave back. Is the Post Office different whereas my sick leave can’t be restored.
According to OPM, “An employee who has a break in service and returns to work for the Federal Government is entitled to the recredit of his or her sick leave, regardless of the length of the break in service.”
DHS is responsible for obtaining your leave records from OPM or requesting them from the National Personnel Records Center. Contact Human Resources for your organization and give them your information and tell them you want your sick leave restored. If you have any of your own records showing your leave balance from the USPS, that may help.