Reauthorize Voluntary Leave Transfer/Bank Programs

7. Reauthorize voluntary leave transfer/bank programs.

Congress should reauthorize the Federal Employees Leave Sharing Act of
1988, which terminates October 31, 1993, with minor technical changes.
This legislation is currently before Congress with minor technical
changes to improve program operations, including a provision to
eliminate the restriction that prohibits interagency transfers of annual
leave between agencies covered by the leave transfer and leave bank
programs.(30)

Voluntary leave transfer programs enable employees who experience a
personal or family medical emergency and who exhaust all their available
annual paid leave to receive donated annual leave from their fellow
federal employees. Employees in voluntary leave bank programs make
contributions of annual leave to their agency leave bank and can receive
annual leave from their agency leave bank if they experience a personal
or family medical emergency and have exhausted all their available paid
leave. James King, Director of OPM, indicated that:

Agencies like the leave sharing program largely because it enables them
to retain valuable employees throughout a personal or family emergency.
Agencies have reported that this benefit far outweighs any hardship
caused by employee absences. In many cases, employees who were leave
recipients under the leave sharing program were able to work
intermittently while participating in the program. Several agencies have
experienced a decline in the number of employee requests for leave
without pay and advanced leave as a result of leave sharing.(31)

During fiscal years 1991 and 1992, the program served more than 23,100
employees, and over 3,742,600 hours of annual leave were
donated/used.(32) "More than 96 percent of Federal employees with
dependent care needs are satisfied with the Federal leave sharing
program," OPM reported.(33)

Endnotes

30. Title 5, United States Code, sec. 6373.

31. U.S. Congress, House, Committee on Post Office and Civil Service,
Subcommittee on Compensation and Employee Benefits, "Leave Sharing
Programs in the Federal Government," testimony by Jim King, Director of
OPM, May 13, 1993.

32. U.S. Office of Personnel Management, Report to Congress on the
Federal Employees Leave Sharing Act of 1988, Public Law 100-566
(Washington, D.C., April 30, 1993), p. 1.

33. OPM, Report to Congress, p. 35.