Reinjured my shoulder 09Jan08. Had surguery in USNH Yokosuka Japan 1984. Retired from Active duty Oct1995. Worked pretty much full time in laborous jobs inbetween. Released back to work 27Feb08 with restrictions, Employer told me no work with restrictions/put on FMLA then on 11 Apr08 I recieved a letter terminating me from work. WHERE are those retiree benefits?? I owe more in medical than I do on the house.

quote:

Originally posted by LBozek:
Reinjured my shoulder 09Jan08. Had surguery in USNH Yokosuka Japan 1984. Retired from Active duty Oct1995. Worked pretty much full time in laborous jobs inbetween. Released back to work 27Feb08 with restrictions, Employer told me no work with restrictions/put on FMLA then on 11 Apr08 I recieved a letter terminating me from work. WHERE are those retiree benefits?? I owe more in medical than I do on the house.

When you provided your employer with the Return to Work papers (OPM)that stated your restrictions for a period of time, it is correct that your employer only has to comply under the OPM FMLA guidelines IF a position is available, and if there isn't then you have the option of a disability retirement, quitting or resigning. On the FMLA issue you brought up, what came to mind was this: You must have accumulated a number of sick leave hours, right? Federal employees hired as PTF, the formula is 2 hours per pay period. for FT it is 4 hours PPP. In order to secure your job and make sure your employer knew that you were not going to walk away, and by so doing he would have benefited greatly because any liability removed is money saved for him/her in the scheme of things. So my question to you would be this...why did you not, or did you take only 1 hour of sick leave a day and in that time period use 7 hours of LWOP status? Many people make the fatal mistake of not wanting to take a cut in salary and thus take the full 8 hour a day sick leave while sick or injured and once all the leave is consumed, there is nothing left to protect you. Is this scenario I played out for you pretty close to your experience? The only exception to the rule as I know it is if the injury occurred on the job and while on pay status, and in that case, the agency is required under law to provide accommodation and if need be re-assign/call all subordinate sections for your placement if the workplace you were assigned was unable to accommodate. This may or may not be the kind of news you wanted to hear. You always have the option of appealing to OPM OR HRC PERS O/D for a hearing, that you claim to be discriminated against by the termination without cause due to injuries sustained and Mgnt unwillingness to consider restrictions.
Wishing you the best and Godspeed.
Eres Tu!
Freddy