Steven E. Brown, a Professional Law Corporation

The Miami Local of the American Postal Workers Union held a workshop on Saturday August 15, 2009 to inform its members about their rights when their hours are cut or when they are sent home due to “no available work” by the Postal Service. About 50 employees and union stewards/officers attended.

Postal Service employees faced with the Service’s downsizing moves, which include disabled employees having their hours reduced or being sent home from work under the National Reassessment Process (NRP), are understandably upset and worried by these developments.

The workshop was opened with an invocation and prayer by union vice-president Carol Sutton. Attorney Steven E. Brown of Westlake Village, California then made a lengthy presentation about employees’ rights, followed by a question-and-answer period in which he answered questions from individual employees and union officials.

After conclusion of the workshop, Ms. Sutton’s comments sent to Mr. Brown in a memo were: “The workshop was a huge success. The members and shop stewards remarked they all learned a lot. Thank you once again.”

QUICK SUMMARY OF POSTAL WORKERS RIGHTS TO WORKERS’ COMPENSATION AND DISABILITY RETIREMENT

Unlike many employees in the true private sector, Postal employees have very generous workers’ compensation and retirement options established long ago by Congress and the unions who represent these workers. These rights frequently come into play when Postal employees are sent home under the NRP.

Postal employees who have been injured on the job have benefits under the Federal Employees’ Compensation Act (FECA), which in 1916 established the workers’ compensation system for Postal and other civilian federal employees. This system is administered by the U. S. Department of Labor’s Office of Workers’ Compensation Programs (OWCP). The benefit for “temporary total disability” is either 66-2/3% (with no spouse or dependent) or 75% (with spouse or dependent) of the employee’s basic pay. Basic pay for this calculation includes night differential, holiday pay, and Sunday pay, but does not include overtime. Since FECA benefits are not taxable, for most employees this benefit is about the same amount as their regular pay check.

“Total disability” under this law does not mean that the employee is unable to do any work at all. It just means that he or she cannot perform the normal job duties or any other alternative duties that are offered by the Postal Service. Since the Postal Service is either not offering any work to these employees, or is drastically reducing their hours, such employees are entitled to workers’ compensation benefits to cover the hours lost. Under the workers’ compensation law, when an employee is working limited duty due to an accepted industrial injury and the employer reduces or eliminates work hours, that employee is by definition “totally disabled” for those hours/days and entitled to FECA benefits to cover the wage loss, except in the relatively rare circumstance in which OWCP has already made a formal decision about the particular employee’s permanent “loss of wage-earning capacity”.

Many people who deal with OWCP find that Office unhelpful or downright hostile to workers’ compensation claimants (employees), their doctors, and their representatives. In order to obtain full benefits available under the law, it may be necessary to hire competent legal counsel such as Mr. Brown’s office which has successfully represented many thousands of injured federal and Postal employees.

Assuming the disability is permanent – namely, it is expected to last for at least another year – the employee is also entitled to apply for early retirement under FERS or CSRS based on disability. Many of the notices that employees receive from the Postal Service about “no available work” do not even mention this option. Unlike workers’ compensation, disability retirement is designed as a permanent, lifetime benefit. If disability retirement is approved, the employee will be able to keep his or her federal group health and life insurance permanently, and pay the low federal group premiums. In addition, the employee is allowed to earn up to 80% of the current pay rate of his or her last Postal job and still receive the full pension benefit. This means that the total of pension benefits and non-Postal wages can often exceed current Postal pay.

Many deserving disability retirement applications are denied due to error by the U. S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and/or due to improper documentation, which can usually be remedied by competent legal counsel either informally or at the hearing stage. Mr. Brown’s office has successfully represented many hundreds of injured federal and Postal employees in disability retirement applications, including appeals to the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) when OPM improperly denied the applications.

In both workers’ compensation claims and disability retirement applications, there ar e strict (and differing) requirements about the type of medical and other evidence that must be presented. Most doctors find it helpful when their patient is represented by knowledgeable legal counsel, who can advise them what they must write in an appropriate medical report.

A lthough Postal workers may feel that the Service’s decision to send them home is unjustified and may be motivated by disability discrimination, these employees should be aware that there are several class action complaints currently pending at EEOC under which they may already be covered.  If they are included in the class of Postal employees being represented by class counsel, they cannot “opt out” of that class action, and their rights with regard to disability discrimination will be determined in that case instead of in any individual EEO complaints they might file. Nevertheless, such employees should file their individual EEO complaints in order to protect any rights they have that might not fall under one of the class actions.

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