Regulation clears way for officers’ overtime pay

The Office of Personnel Management on Thursday loosened a regulation that could have cost federal law enforcement officers thousands of dollars a year in lost pay and reduced their retirement benefits.

The regulation makes sure that federal officers who are put on temporary assignments during national emergencies continue to receive a special form of overtime pay worth up to 25 percent of their salaries. Under the old regulation, the officers could have been forced to forfeit that money because of bureaucratic rules governing the special overtime pay, known in federal jargon as "administratively uncontrollable overtime."

Federal agencies provide administratively uncontrollable overtime (AUO) pay to workers, primarily law enforcement officers, who have to put in frequent unscheduled overtime to get their jobs done. Rather than providing overtime pay on an hourly basis, agencies simply give the employees an annual salary boost of between 10 percent and 25 percent, depending on how much occasional overtime they're likely to work.

"AUO is a regular supplement for irregular overtime," said Bryce Baker, a senior policy adviser at OPM. The Justice Department's Hazardous Materials Response Unit, for example, can provide AUO pay as an annual salary supplement to chemists, microbiologists and other employees who are expected to put in long hours during hazardous material emergencies.

The rules governing administratively uncontrollable overtime are complex. One rule requires agencies to stop giving AUO pay to workers when they go on temporary assignments that don't qualify for AUO pay but do qualify for regular overtime pay. The rule prevents employees from receiving both AUO pay and regular overtime for long periods of time.

After Sept. 11, the Justice Department asked OPM to loosen the rules on temporary assignments. Border Patrol agents, who are the largest group of federal employees who receive AUO pay, were rotating through many temporary assignments that didn't qualify for AUO pay. AUO pay counts toward law enforcement officers' retirement benefits. Because the Border Patrol agents were spending so much time on temporary, Sept. 11-related assignments, the agents faced the prospect of losing both the premium AUO pay and the subsequent retirement benefits.

The standard rule lets employees spend as many as three tours of 10 days each, or 30 days a year, on temporary assignments without losing AUO pay. That rule applies when a national emergency is not in effect.

Under OPM's new regulation, which is effective only during national emergencies, employees can go on as many as three tours of 30 days each, or 90 days per year, on temporary assignments without losing AUO pay. National emergencies must be declared by the president.

While regular federal workers can receive AUO pay, most who receive it are law enforcement officers.

The final rule, published in the Jan. 30 Federal Register, takes effect March 3. But an interim rule to the same effect, published last February, took effect retroactively to Sept. 11, 2001.