Unexcused employee absences on the rise, senator says

Federal employees increasingly are not showing up for work, according to a new congressional report.

Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., released a report Thursday showing that the number of hours that agencies reported their employees were absent from work without taking leave increased from approximately 2.5 million hours per year in 2001 to 3.5 million hours in 2007.

"Everyone knows that rule number one for any job is showing up," Coburn said. "No private company would put up with its employees refusing to show up for work, let alone watch the problem grow year after year."

Since 2001, nearly 300,000 federal employees have been AWOL for some period of time, Coburn reported.

Coburn has taken an interest in employee absences without leave since late 2006. He asked 19 agencies to report on employee absences, and 18 responded. One, the State Department, said it did not track such absences. Several others provided incomplete data.

The Veterans Affairs and the Treasury departments accounted for more than 60 percent of all AWOL hours between 2001 and 2007.

Agency practices on whether and when to charge employees as being absent without leave vary fairly widely. At one agency, the report found, being late by as little as 15 minutes can result in an employee being characterized as AWOL.

Coburn's report did not track whether or not employees were denied pay for the hours they did not work.