Q. I am a postal employee under CSRS who will retire later this year. I have calculated my sick leave to use toward my retirement time. My question is, does the Postal Service calculate sick leave hours (credit) differently than OPM? The reason I ask is I was told that the Postal Service does not require as many hours as OPM and this could affect how my sick leave credit is computed when OPM does my service time.
A. What you were told is untrue. Calculating the value of sick leave in determining your retirement annuity is the exclusive province of OPM. For retirement purposes, a day of sick leave is 5.797+ hours and a month approximately 174 hours long. Any days of actual service that don’t add up to one months are handled the same way.
