Ask FELTG
Have a question about federal employment law? Read below to find answers - or ask a question of your own.Ask FELTG: If an employee with a disability can perform his job at the worksite, why would telework as a reasonable accommodation be necessary?
It wouldn’t be necessary, though the agency could still choose to grant telework as the accommodation if it wanted to. EEOC guidance suggests that the employee’s preference on accommodation should be considered, but ultimately the agency gets to choose the...
Ask FELTG Tackles Calendar Days in Suspensions and Holidays in FMLA and PPL
March 8, 2022 Sometimes to understand Federal employment law, you need an old-fashioned print calendar by your side, as these two recent Ask FELTG submissions illustrate. We know that suspensions must be served as calendar days, not workdays, but how can we ensure...
Ask FELTG: Is an employee covered under FMLA when his adult child has a temporary inability to perform a daily activity?
Here’s a hypothetical scenario posed by a FELTG student: An adult child is involved in a car accident. The adult child will be undergoing a lengthy recovery period and, during that time, may not be capable of performing one of the activities of daily living (ADL). The...
Ask FELTG: How do you know if an employee really has PTSD and, if so, how do you accommodate it?
Unfortunately, there is a bit of skepticism in the workplace about Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), as demonstrated by this question received in a recent class taught by FELTG Instructor Shana Palmieri, LCSW. PTSD is classified as an anxiety disorder that...
Ask FELTG: The difference between vaccine “exemptions” and “exceptions” and do such requests relieve the Federal employee from meeting the vaccine deadline?
November 1, 2021 Q: We have seen the words “exemption" and “ exception" used in connection with the vaccine mandate. Would you explain the difference between the two? A: Functionally, there’s no real difference – employees are asking for the reasonable accommodation...
Ask FELTG: What penalty is appropriate for an employee who untruthfully claims a supervisor said something inappropriate?
September 28, 2020 In this hypothetical question posed by a FELTG reader, a bargaining unit employee (Employee A) reported that a non-bargaining unit employee (Employee B) told another non-bargaining unit employee (Employee C) that their mutual supervisor said...
Performance Isn’t About Can’t Do vs. Won’t Do
By William Wiley, September 7, 2021 Below is an email we received from a FELTG student, lightly edited for space and context, followed by our FELTG answer. Dear FELTG, I attended your MSPB Law Week in person last year just before everything was...
Ask FELTG: For FMLA eligibility to care for an adult child, does the inability to perform one of the activities of daily living have to be permanent?
A FELTG customer shared the following hypothetical scenario: An adult child is involved in a car accident and during a lengthy recovery period may not be capable of performing one of the activities of daily living (ADLs), however the prognosis is that eventually they...
Ask FELTG: Am I supposed to report when I notice that one of my employees has symptoms of the new COVID-19 variant? Wouldn’t that be a violation of HIPAA or the ADA?
Even as masks come off and life appears closer to normal, there is still a lot of concern about the spread of coronavirus, especially with the identification of new variants. A recent outbreak in a state government office in Manatee County, Fla., left two employees...
Ask FELTG: How do you discipline an employee for a second act of misconduct that occurred before you’ve had the opportunity to discipline him/her/them for a first act of misconduct?
In the hypothetical situation, the agency started the disciplinary process for an employee's failure to follow instructions (FFI). During this process, the employee went Absent Without Leave for three days. The agency already had started the process of proposing...