I am often asked whether or not it is okay to resign from the Agency prior to either (1) filing for disability retirement or (2) receiving a decision from the Office of Personnel Management. A decision to resign from the Agency must be weighed very carefully, for there are multiple factors which must be considered.
I will try and outline a few of the considerations to be weighed:
(1) What advantage is gained by resigning? If it is merely to avoid the hassles of dealing with the Agency (the Agency may insist upon updated medical documents every couple of weeks; they may call and harass you every week; you may have an unsympathetic supervisor, etc.), then I normally advise against resigning. There is no advantage to resigning, other than the quietude of being separated from service. As an attorney, I believe that is not enough of a reason.
(2) What is the disadvantage of resigning? There may be many: Any leverage to force the agency to cooperate with a disability retirement application may be lost; if your doctor has not yet written a medical narrative report (and, believe me, for some doctors, that can take months), the doctor will have to be reminded that any statement of employment impact must pre-date the date of resignation; you lose the leverage of that which the Agency holds most dear, for no price: your position. For the position you fill, that slot which suddenly becomes vacant once you resign, is that which is most dear, most valuable for the Agency: and to resign is to give it up without having the Agency pay any cost.
Sincerely,
Robert R. McGill, Esquire
Filed under: OPM Disability and a Hostile Working Environment, Resigning or Being Separated From a Federal Agency for Medical Problems or Other Reasons, U.S. Postal Service (USPS) Disability Retirement | Tagged: agencies to injured workers: no jobs so resign, attention federal worker - when the agency wants you to resign, considerations before resigning from the us postal service, federal disability retirement benefits for epa employees, forcing the agency to cooperate for opm disability, future of limited duty us postal employees, harassment in the Postal Service, harassment in US federal government jobs, harassment is not a medical issue, hostile work environment for federal workers, lawyer federal retirement disability, light duty accommodation versus disability retirement, limited duty assignments united states postal service, limited jobs for light duty employees, no light duty jobs in the usps with the recession, opm disability and advantages from resigning from the agency, opm disability for federal workers in alabama, OPM disability retirement, Postal Service disability, resign so you don't get any federal medical benefits?, resigning for OPM disability retirement, scaring disabled workers so they resign without getting any benefits, separated from service, should I resign first to get federal disability retirement?, supervisor's harassment by calling you home, terminated from federal job, the agency always wants injured workers to resign, the usps scaring tactics to disabled postal workers, USPS disability retirement, USPS disability retirement benefits, USPS Return to Work Certification, usps separation, when light duty is not longer available to postal workers, when the federal agency is unable to accommodate, you don’t have to resign to apply for medical disability | 1 Comment »
