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National Rural Letter Carriers’ Association | Serving with a Smile
| Priority of Choice | Regular Craft | Regular Tour | Regular Facility |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 st | Within | Within | Within |
| 2 nd | Outside | Within | Within |
| 3 rd | Within | Outside | Within |
| 4 th | Outside | Outside | Within |
| 5 th | Within | Within | Outside |
| 6 th | Outside | Within | Outside |
| 7 th | Within | Outside | Outside |
| 8 th | Outside | Outside | Outside |
Reassigning and Employee Following Limited Duty
Limited duty is a temporary accommodation. If medical findings indicate that the employee has reached maximum medical improvement (MMI) and the employee remains totally or partially disabled beyond one year, he or she should either be returned to full duty or permanently reassigned to a modified position under the Rehabilitation Program.
Ensuring Reemployment or Reassignment of Employees Injured on Duty
Disability Fully Overcome Within 1 Year
When an employee fully overcomes the injury or disability within 1 year after the commencement of compensation payments from OWCP, or after compensable disability recurs, the USPS must given an employee the right to resume employment in the former or equivalent position.
Disability Fully Overcome After More Than 1 Year
When a current or former employee fully overcomes the injury or disability more than 1 year after the compensation begins, the USPS must give the current or former employee priority consideration for reemployment or reassignment into the former position or equivalent one.
Disability Partially Overcome
Current Employee: When an employee has partially overcome a compensable disability, the USPS must make every effort toward assigning the employee to limited duty consistent with the employee's medically defined work limitation tolerance. In assigning such limited duty, the USPS should minimize any adverse or disruptive impact on the employee.
Former Employee: When a former employee has partially recovered from a compensable injury or disability, the USPS must make every effort toward reemployment consistent with medically defined work limitation tolerances. Such an employee may be returned to any position for which he or she is qualified, including a lower grade position than that which the employee held when compensation began.
Even though the above information only provides protection for a period of one year, the Memorandum of Understanding in the 1995-1999 National Agreement concerning injured rural letter carriers and the posting of their routes provides additional protection that extends this period to 2 years.
The Memorandum of Understanding reads:
"It is agreed that when, as a result of a job-related illness or injury, a regular rural carrier is unable to perform all the duties of his or her assigned route for a period of two years, the employee must relinquish the route and such route will be posted for bid in accordance with Article 12, Section 3.
Prior to posting such route, however, management will request that the employee provide medical certification indicating whether the employee is, at that time, able to fully perform the duties of the assigned route. If the employee fails to provide such certification within 30 days of notification to do so, or if the medical certification reflects that the employee is unable to perform the full duties of the assignment, the route shall be posted, and the employee shall not be permitted to exercise his or her bid rights as to that posting.
When a regular rural carrier relinquishes his or her route as a result of the above circumstances, has not yet been placed in a modified job assignment, and is working a limited duty assignment, the employee will become an unassigned regular rural carrier. Rural routes numbers 960 through 979 may be created as needed, and the carrier will be assigned to one of these routes. The employee will continue to perform the current limited duty assignment until the appropriate action is taken to have the carrier reassigned to a modified job. Management will continue to make every effort to assign this employee to a modified job.
If the carrier becomes able to perform all the duties of the rural carrier position while unassigned, and a vacancy exists in the office, the carrier will be allowed to bid on the vacancy. Should the carrier fail to bid on the vacancy, and there is a residual vacancy resulting from the posting, the carrier will be assigned to the residual vacancy.
However, should a residual vacancy not occur as a result of the posting or a vacancy does not exist in the office, the carrier will be treated as the excessed junior regular rural carrier, and reassigned in accordance with Article 12.4.A.1. Until the employee's reassignment is completed, the employee will continue to receive the same rate of pay received on the date of injury.
When a regular rural carrier relinquishes his or her route as a result of the above circumstances, has not yet been placed in a modified job assignment, and is in an injured on duty/leave without pay (IOD/LWOP) status, rural routes 980 through 989 may be created and the carrier assigned accordingly. Only those employees who are in an IOD/LWOP status may be placed on rural routes 980 through 989 because salary payments will not generate from these routes.
When creating both the 960-979 and the 980-989 routes, the route data for the newly created route must reflect the route data of the route to which the employee was assigned on the date that the employee was injured."
Totally Disabled
If the injured worker is not working limited duty when the Postal Service requests medical documentation in order to place the route up for bid, the Postal Service must create a "dummy" route. This route would be numbered 980-999. This route would have all the characteristics of the date of injury route. The Postal Service has to complete Form 4003 to include: route number (starting with 980 for the first route in the office), route length, regular and/or centralized boxes, stops, base hours, high or low option if applicable, and vehicle data. Once the route is created, the Postal Service will process Form 50 (Notification of Personnel Action) to transfer the injured-on-duty carrier to this route.
Remember: a "dummy" route should only be assigned to injured rural carriers who are not working limited duty.
Partially Disabled (Maximum Medical Improvement - MMI)
If a rural carrier is working limited duty at the time that they have been off the route for two years, and have reached maximum medical improvement (MMI), the Postal Service must make a permanent modified assignment.
The Postal Service, in assigning an injured rural letter carrier to a permanent modified position, must comply with the provisions of the Employee and Labor Relations Manual (ELM). Section 546.2 Collective Bargaining Agreements addresses the procedures required and has recently been updated/amended to include references to the Snow Arbitration Decision.
Section 546.222 Reemployment or Reassignment states:
"A partially recovered current or former employee reassigned or reemployed to a different craft to provide appropriate work will not normally be assigned to a residual vacancy when it impairs the seniority rights of PTF employees. Such employees, however, may be reassigned or reemployed to incumbent-only positions established to accommodate the employee's job-related medical restrictions."
As you can see from this section, if the Postal Service creates a position that is purely created as a result of the approved on-the-job injury, and that job is not one that can be bid on once the injured worker retires or resigns from the Postal Service, it would not impair the seniority rights of PTF employees. The Snow Arbitration Decision would also not apply if he or she is being placed in a post office that does not have PTFs. If an injured worker is assigned a modified job that is classified as a PTF, please note that he or she is being converted at a saved rate that will guarantee a salary that equals that which he or she had at the date of injury. Many carriers are concerned about the issue of holiday pay. As a rural carrier, hourly salary is calculated by taking an annual salary and dividing by 2080 hours. As a PTF, annual salary will be divided by 2000. This 80 hour difference represents the 10 federal holidays. In essence, he or she is now going to be making more per hour to accommodate the missing holiday pay.
Partially Disabled (Not MMI)
The routes listed above that are numbered 960 through 979 are only a temporary alternative when relinquishing a route due to an on the job injury. The new employee category of "unassigned regular rural carrier" is only to be used when a permanent modified job assignment is not available. Some reasons that a modified job would not be available include: the carrier has not reached maximum medical improvement, the carrier is unable to work many hours per week but is likely to increase those hours in the near future, and/or current restrictions are likely to change in the future to allow for additional job responsibilities. Again, assignment to routes 960 through 979 are only temporary and the carrier would eventually have to be converted to a permanent modified position following the procedures listed above.
Vocational Rehabilitation
The Joint DOL-USPS Rehabilitation Program was developed to fulfill the USPS legal obligation to provide work for injured-on-duty (IOD) employees. Providing gainful employment within medically defined work restrictions has proven to be in the best interest of both the employee and the USPS. In many cases, returning to work has aided the employee in reaching maximum medical recovery. This program is also one of the most viable means of controlling workers' compensation costs.
Over the years, an in-house rehabilitation program has evolved and has been incorporated into the Rehabilitation Program as a means of facilitating the proper placement and accommodation of current employees with permanent partial disabilities resulting from injuries on duty. This program is also appropriate for reassigning to permanent modified positions employees who have not received compensation but have been in temporary limited duty for an extended period of time.
To be eligible for participation in the Rehabilitation Program, the employee must meet the following criteria:
- He or she must have an approved FECA claim on file with OWCP
- He or she must have a job-related, permanent partial disability documented by medical evidence.
- He or she must be receiving or be eligible to receive compensation payments for the disability. (Note that an employee working in a limited duty assignment is eligible for disability compensation but is not receiving it because an appropriate limited duty assignment has been made available.)
Evaluation of OWCP Rehabilitation Referrals
The USPS medical provider will evaluate all medical records referred by OWCP. An injured employee may have some degree of concurrent disability not caused by or related to the original job injury or disability. The USPS medical provider will carefully evaluate all concurrent disabilities and include their potential impact in his or her recommendation. Concurrent disabilities must be accommodated in job offers under the Rehabilitation Program.
OWCP Due Process
The OWCP claims examiner is provided with a copy of the job offer and job description at the same time it is extended to the employee. If the employee refuses the offer, a series of actions must take place to ensure that the injured employee receives due process as a result of a USPS offer of employment. These actions include the following:
- The claims examiner reviews the offer package, along with the evidence of record, and determines if it is suitable to the employee's partially disabled condition.
- When the offered job is determined not be suitable, the claims examiner advises the ICCO, OWCP rehabilitation specialist, and the employee, in writing, of the suitability of the offer.
- When the claims examiner determines that the offered job is suitable, the claims examiner notifies the employee in writing of the following points:
- That OWCP considers the job offer suitable under the provisions of 5 USPS 8106 ( c).
- That if the employee refuses the job, he or she will not be entitled to monetary benefits (except medical benefits) unless he or she can show that such refusal was reasonable or justified. The employee has 30 days from the date of the notification by the claims examiner to accept the employment or to explain why the employment was refused.
- That the offered job remains available for due process consideration
- That the employee can still accept the job without penalty.
- That further action will be taken without additional notice by OWCP for the employee's failure to cooperate.
- When the employee does not provide good cause for refusing the offered job, the claims examiner may terminate the employee's benefits at the end of the 30 day notification period in addition to 15 days for due process consideration.
Formal Loss of Wage Earning Capacity (LWEC)
FECA provides compensation for the reduction of compensation to reflect a worker's earning capacity. The law provides for payment of compensation based upon loss of wage-earning capacity (LWEC) for permanent effects of an injury, i.e., the injured employee has reached maximum medical improvement but still continues to have residuals from the job-related injury. 20 CFR 10.303 states that an injured employee who is unable to return to the position held at the time of injury, or to earn equivalent wages, but who is not totally disabled for all gainful employment is entitled to compensation computed on LWEC.
The OWCP claims examiner determines the employee's LWEC entitlement. This compensation is paid on the basis of the difference between the employee's capacity to earn wages and the current wages of the job held at time of injury. The "Shadrick" formula is used by OWCP to determine an injured employee's wage-earning capacity.
NRLCA Magazine
Since its inception in 1903, The National Rural Letter Carrier magazine has been providing timely information to members of the NRLCA. The magazine is published on a monthly basis and is mailed to all members as a benefit of union membership... read more
