For many years, being on Worker’s Comp when injured while working for the Postal Service, worked fairly well. The Postal Service, in conjunction with, and in coordination, would offer an acceptable “modified position”, delineating the physical restrictions and medical limitations based upon the treating doctor’s clinical assessment, or in accordance with the OWCP-appointed doctor. The Postal employee would then work in that “modified position”, and so long as the Postal Supervisor or Postmaster was reasonable (which was not and is not always the case), the coordinated efforts between OWCP, the U.S. Postal Service and the Postal employee would result in years of “quiet truce”, with the tug and pull occurring in some of the details of what “intermittent” means, or whether “2 hours of standing” meant two hours continuously, or something else – and multiple other issues to be fought for, against, and somehow resolved.
The rules of the game, however, have radically changed with the aggressive National Reassessment Program, instituted in the last few years in incremental stages, nationwide. Now, people are summarily sent home and told that “no work is available”. Postal Workers are systematically told that the previously-designated modified positions are no longer available — that a worker must be fully able to perform all of the essential elements of his or her job. This last point, of course, is what I have been arguing for many, many years — that the so-called “modified job” was and is not a permanent position, and is therefore not a legal accommodation under the laws governing Federal Disability Retirement for FERS & CSRS employees. After so many years of having the Post Office and the Office of Personnel Management argue that such a “modified job” is an accommodation, it is good to see that the truth has finally come out.
Sincerely,
Robert R. McGill, Esquire
Posted in Accommodation and Light Duty, OPM Disability & OWCP Workers Comp Filings, U.S. Postal Service (USPS) Disability Retirement Tagged: accommodation of federal employees, applying for disability in the postal service, Arkansas OPM Disability Retirement, csrs medical retirement, disability retirement for federal employees, disability retirement opm legal accommodation, excessing light duty from post office, failing to provide limited duty to injured workers, FERS disability retirement, future of limited duty us postal employees, government employee on the job injury, how the reassessment program affects postal employees, injured postal and federal employees, legal accommodation under fers disability rules, light duty accommodation versus disability retirement, limited duty assignments united states postal service, limited number of limited duty job offers, no light duty jobs in the usps with the recession, no light or limited duty for a severe non-work related disability, no work available for injured postal workers, OPM disability retirement, opm disability retirement blog, opm medical disability, postal employees with intermittent lifting restrictions, postal employees with physical restrictions, postal personal injury and the rules of the game, postal reform package and the future of light duty employees, postal service disability attorney, postal workers with standing restrictions, reasonable accommodation of federal workers, the ill postal workers and their rights to pensions and benefits, usps disability attorney, usps disability benefits, USPS disability retirement, usps medical disability, USPS Reasonable Accommodation Committee, USPS Return to Work Certification, usps workers with medical limitations, when excessing light duty from usps then consider disability, when the federal government doesn't accommodate you, when the owcp sends injured federal workers to do menial jobs, when the postal service wants the resignation of an ill employee, when the usps refuses accommodation of employee
