Forfeiture of Annual Leave

An employee of the Defense Contract Audit Agency (DCAA) appealed the settlement of his claim for restoration of annual leave. The settlement provided that 60 hours of annual leave should be substituted for leave without pay (LWOP), but the employee claimed that he should have been paid for 64 hours of annual leave rather than 60 and that his pay should have been computed at a higher rate. The record showed that the employee retired from DCAA in June, 1973, and was immediately rehired as a reemployed annuitant until the end of January, 1974, at which time his appointment was terminated. During this period he requested and was granted 200 hours of LWOP even though he had 300 hours of accumulated annual leave at the end of the 1973 leave year. Since an employee cannot accumulate more than 240 hours of annual leave for carryover into a succeeding year, the employee forfeited 60 hours of annual leave. It was determined that the employee should not have been carried in an LWOP status when he had annual leave subject to forfeiture. The employee, however, contended that the annual leave should have been restored to his leave account after the end of the 1973 leave year and he would then have been compensated at the higher rate of pay he was receiving at the date of separation without deduction of the amount of his retirement annuity. Because the leave was instead substituted for LWOP, he was paid at the rate he received as a reemployed annuitant, reduced by the amount of his annuity. This situation did not constitute an administrative error because the error was not a direct cause of the forfeiture of leave. Even though the employee was carried in a LWOP status when his absence should have been charged to annual leave, that mistake did not result in a forfeiture. It was properly determined that the 60 hours of annual leave should be substituted for leave without pay, thereby avoiding the problem of forfeiture. The DCAA properly compensated the employee for the substituted 60 hours of annual leave at his rate of pay as a reemployed annuitant, reduced by the amount of his annuity.