The gargantuan of Leviathans is the Federal entity with a bureaucracy so expansive that identities of Federal employees are not merely never recognized, but to a great extent, irrelevant. Certain agencies fall into that category: The Department of Defense; The Department of Homeland Security; the Department of Veterans Affairs; The Department of Agriculture, with all of their subsidiary services, including the U.S. Forest Service; The U.S. Department of Justice; and, further, the U.S. Postal Service probably qualifies in that category of large, subsuming organizations where one’s identity of any sense of “self”is lost within the overwhelming size of the bureaucracy.
For the Federal employee or the Postal worker who is employed by such organizations, or any of the lesser ones (i.e., U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Aviation Administration; Department of Commerce; NOAA; Department of Energy; Department of — and one may almost be able to simply insert any pragmatic noun or adjective, and there is a department or agency which fits the bill), the intersection of a medical condition which begins to impede one’s ability and capacity to perform the full positional duties of one’s job, becomes a double-edged sword: On the one side of the equation, being an employee of a large organization can mean that one can, with some success of anonymity, continue to work without much notice, so long as the immediate supervisor or other coworkers do not take note; on the other side of the sharpened sword, is the reality that if such an organization begins to take punitive and adverse actions, it is difficult to fight against the compendium of agency tactics.
Whether the agency notices or not, the Federal employee and the U.S. Postal worker has an absolute right to file for CSRS or FERS Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, so long as certain prefatory legal criteria are met. For the Federal employee or Postal worker under FERS, a minimum of 18 months of Federal Service is required. For the quickly-fading dinosaur of CSRS employees, the minimum requirement of 5 years of Federal Service is required. In either case, if a Federal employee or Postal worker begins to suffer from a medical condition, such that the medical condition prevents one from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s job, then it is time to consider filing for Federal OPM Disability Retirement benefits, especially if it becomes fairly evident that the medical condition is going to last a minimum of 12 months.
Then comes the next hurdle and realization: While the ill Federal employee or the injured Postal worker is employed by one of those gargantuan entities, the filing of a Federal Disability Retirement application must ultimately be submitted to another Leviathan of sorts: The U.S. Office of Personnel Management. C’est la vie.
Sincerely,
Robert R. McGill, Esquire
Filed under: OPM Disability Actors - The Agency | Tagged: army federal civilian workers and the off-the-job injuries, army non-military personnel, attorney representing federal workers for disability throughout the united states, civilian us marines employees and medical retirement, compensation for injured Homeland Security employees, customs officers disability retirement, defense intelligence agency disability retirement, department of agriculture disability, dhs disability retirement, disability restrictions in federal law enforcement occupations, disability retirement for secretaries working for the federal government, disability retirement for usda agriculture employees, dot disability gov, dot transportation disability retirement, fbi gov disability, federal agents injured in and off the job, federal disability department of state dos employees, federal employees with back injuries, federal law enforcement disability retirement, federal machinists with chronic medical conditions, FERS disability retirement, fers disability retirement for civilian us army workers, fers retirement from 6c covered position, gov occupational jobs and disability retirement, government employee disability retirement, government law enforcement officers with back injuries, homeland security disability retirement, ice gov disability, immigration agents disability, injured janitors working in federal facilities, law enforcement officers with medical conditions, law enforcement positional duties and disability restrictions, law firm representing clients in opm disability law all across america, leos and the failed fitness for duty exams, marine corps civilian disability retirement, medical and disability benefits for federal employees, medical retirement department of state employees, medical retirement for civilian navy employees, medical retirement for customs and border control employees, medical retirement for employees in small us agencies, medical retirement for nasa employees, medical retirement from retirement federal agencies, medical retirement homeland security personnel, navy civilians employees and coping with disabilities, navy non-military personnel and workers comp, nih employees gov medical retirement, noaa disability retirement, owcp disability retirement, owcp stress cases and federal agencies, representing federal employees from any us government agency, resources for nasa employees, sec gov disability retirement, supervisors and disabled employees in the US federal agencies, transportation security administration disability retirement, TSA disability retirement, us air force civilian workers and their disabilities, us customs and border protection federal medical or disability retirement, when federal agents can't arrest the bad guys anymore due to disabilities | Leave a comment »
CSRS & FERS Medical Disability Retirement: Supervisors, Performance, and Other Matters
In preparing, formulating and filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether under FERS or CSRS (although the latter is increasingly becoming a rarer animal, almost to the point of extinction, and has been recently annotated on the “endangered species” list), the concern of many Federal and Postal employees often centers around past performance reviews (a history of “outstanding” performance, etc.), the potential statements of the Supervisor on an SF 3112B, and similar issues.
What the Federal or Postal employee contemplating filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits fails to understand, is that the reason why he or she has reached that critical juncture where Federal Disability Retirement must be considered, is tied directly to that long and commendable history of outstanding performance.
To put it bluntly, the Federal or Postal employee who has done his or her job so well over the years, has killed him/herself in doing it. That is why the medical condition has not improved; that is why the progressively deteriorating process, whether of a physical nature or of a psychiatric bent, has reached its critical mass, and one cannot go on in the same manner, any longer.
It has come to a point of a necessity to file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits. It matters not what one’s history is; if one cannot perform one or more of the essential elements of one’s job, then it is time to file; regardless of what one’s performance history is, or what one’s Supervisor’ Statement may potentially reflect.
Sincerely,
Robert R. McGill, Esquire
Filed under: OPM Disability Application - SF 3112B Supervisor’s Statement for CSRS and FERS | Tagged: accepting opm disability clients all across america, civil service disability retirement, current performance evaluations and fers disability retirement, deteriorating medical conditions during federal employment, essential elements of jobs, federal disability lawyer, filing for OPM disability retirement, great occupational evaluation reviews before the opm disability retirement application, job performance before the federal disability retirement application, legal services for federal and postal workers all across america, living with a deteriorating living condition and the injured postal worker, more on the opm disability application supervisor's statements, nationwide representation of federal employees, opm disability retirement - when procrastinating could means a deteriorating health, performance issues during the opm disability application, postal employees with progressive deteriorating illnesses, postal supervisors and managers, preserving one's deteriorating health, representing federal employees in and outside the country, some advice on taking advice: taking your doctor's advice over your supervisor's, supervisor's statements and defamation, supervisors and disabled employees in the US federal agencies, the importance of supervisor comments during the federal disability retirement process, the limited importance of the supervisor's statements in the opm disability process, the supervisor's opinions during the federal disability process, what would happen if man's past medical issues are rated as excellent | Leave a comment »