Q. The following is from the U.S. Postal Service Employment and Labor Relations Manual:
512.732 Entitlement Amounts
Separating employees may receive lump-sum terminal leave payments as follows:
Nonbargaining Unit Employees. Nonbargaining unit employees may receive a lump-sum leave payment for accumulated annual leave carried over from the previous year; accrued annual leave for the year in which they separate, including amounts over the carryover maximum; any unused donated leave; and for full-time and part-time regular employees, holidays that fall within the terminal leave period.
I retired Oct. 31 with an annual leave balance of 576 hours, for which I received a lump-sum payment.
That balance, if used, would have carried me into February 2014. Shouldn’t I have also been paid for all the holidays between my retirement date and the time my annual leave would have been exhausted?
A. According to the Office of Personnel Management, these are the only things included in a lump-sum payment for unused annual leave:
* Rate of basic pay
* Locality pay or other similar geographic adjustment
* Within-grade increase (if waiting period met on date of separation)
* Across-the-board annual adjustments
* Administratively uncontrollable overtime pay, availability pay, and standby duty pay
* Night differential for FWS employees only (including portion of lump-sum period that would have occurred when employee was scheduled to work night shifts)
* Regularly scheduled overtime pay under the Fair Labor Standards Act for employees on uncommon tours of duty
* Supervisory differentials
* Nonforeign area cost-of-living allowances and post differentials
* Foreign area post allowances
