mhc5096,
Regarding your 2 Oct 2010 post, you bring up the issue of whether you get to accumulate annual leave and sick leave while LWOP for miltary duty. You said "schedule at least one 8 hour day of regular annual or military leave with 72 hours of LWOP each pay period and you will be fine. I've done this numerous times over the past 10 years in 4 different agencies."
How are you getting this to happen the way you describe?
Now, at first glance, it does say "80 hours during a pay period" making me tend to agree with you. However, I just got back and LES that took 40 hours LWOP last pay period and 40 hours LWOP this pay period -- and this pay period has no annual leave or sick accrual.
I reread the quoted text above. I noticed it does not say "..in a pay period". It says "..during a pay period". In other words, you could accumulated 79 prior, and then take just 1 more LWOP hour, and then *during* this pay period you took the 1 hour, you would have accumulated 80 and loose annual leave and sick leave accrual.
This is written much clearer in the underlying law, 5 CFR 630.208(a) (
http://cfr.vlex.com/vid/630-208-reduction-leave-credits-19600929), which says, "When the number of hours in a nonpay status in a full-time employee's leave year equals the number of basepay hours in a pay period, the agency shall reduce his credits for leave by an amount equal to the amount of leave the employee earns during the pay period." In other words, the accumulation is done during an entire leave year (fiscal year?), and has an effect when the total hits multiples of 80.
So, how have you gotten annual leave and sick leave accrued numerous times over the past 10 years when you did 72hr LWOP + 8 hr leave in a pay period? If you do this once per year, then it will work (because 630.208(a) drops the less-than-80 number at the end of each year). But if you did this more than once per year, I think you must have been hit with an annual leave and sick leave accrual loss on the second time you did it.
Having said all of that, HOWEVER, notice the last table entry at
http://www.opm.gov/oca/leave/html/LWOP_eff.asp. It speaks about the effect of LWOP specifically for military duty: "Nonpay status for employees who are performing military duty ...counts as a continuation of Federal employment for all purposes upon the employee's return to duty."
So, even if you hit that magic threshold of 80 hours during any specific pay period, if it was military LWOP, it should not affect your annual leave and sick leave accrual for that period--which is opposite the prior table entry on the same web page.
Any hard-core evidence (experience) from others where this has gone one way or the other? Has anybody gotten leave and sick leave accrual doing the 72+8 hour thing more than once in a year?