U.S. Office of Personnel Management Variations to Staffing Regulations

Variations By Career Transition Assistance

The following variations are listed in chronological order. They are excerpted from the quarterly notices which are listed under Quarterly Notices of Variations.

Variations from the June 4, 1996 notice:

• The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has approved a precedent-setting variation under civil service rule V to 5 CFR 330.706(b) which requires that agencies report all vacancies to OPM when accepting applications from outside the agency (including applications for temporary positions lasting 90 or more days).

• The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) is experiencing unprecedented growth and needs to rehire recent INS retirees who can assist the INS in an effort to hire and train 5,000 new employees. Temporarily rehiring recently retired INS employees will provide INS with a cadre of experienced and well trained workers who can assist in this massive hiring and retraining effort. The support positions needed are unique, and require knowledge of immigration and nationality laws, and in most instances, fluency in Spanish.

• Former Federal employees who would otherwise apply for and be considered for these positions under 5 CFR Part 330, interim Interagency Career Transition Assistance Plan (ICTAP) regulations, would not meet the highly specialized qualification requirements. INS has no surplus or displaced employees who qualify for these positions. Requiring the INS to advertise these one of a kind positions where there is no expectation that there are displaced employees with the requisite skills would add unnecessary delay to accomplishing its goals mandated by Congress.

• Variation was granted to avoid undue hardship to the agency while undergoing a massive effort to hire and train 5,000 new employees. The variation did not circumvent the intent of the regulation because Federal displaced workers who might otherwise apply for these positions during the notice period would not be considered well qualified, and thus would not be entitled to selection priority.

Variations from the June 5, 1996 notice:

• The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has approved a precedent-setting variation under civil service rule V to 5 CFR 330.706(b) which requires that agencies report all vacancies to OPM when accepting applications from outside the agency (including applications for temporary positions lasting 90 or more days).

• The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is pursuing trial and phased retirement programs, to support downsizing. These agency programs encourage employees eligible for retirement, but not sure they are ready, to try it. Under these programs NASA and the retirees sign an agreement which enables retirees to return to work as reemployed annuitants immediately, on a part-time schedule, or after a year on either a full-time or part-time schedule. Under these programs NASA agrees to make every reasonable effort to reemploy the retiree.

• Former Federal employees who would otherwise apply for and be considered for these positions under 5 CFR Part 330, interim Interagency Career Transition Assistance Plan (ICTAP) regulations, are not participants in this NASA program and therefore, do not qualify for these positions. Requiring NASA to advertise these positions, which do not exist except for retirees under these programs, would add unnecessary delay in rehiring program participants.

• Variation was granted to avoid announcing positions established under these programs. This avoids falsely raising expectations of employment causing undue hardship to displaced employees. In addition, it assists NASA in honoring its current commitments without the unnecessary hardship of processing applications from displaced and surplus employees. Further, this will enable NASA to continue using these programs in downsizing thereby minimizing the number of surplus and displaced employees, while OPM prepares an exception for the final regulations.

Variations from the August 9, 1996 notice:

• The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has approved a precedent-setting variation under civil rule V to 5 CFR 330.604(b) and (f), and to 5 CFR 330.703(b), which set forth the categories of employees eligible for placement assistance under the interim CareerTtransition regulations. The variation permits excepted service employees eligible for noncompetitive appointment under the Criminal Justice Information Services Placement Assistance Act to be considered "surplus" or "displaced" for purposes of internal selection priority, and "displaced" for purposes of selection priority over other Federal employees under the Interagency Career Transition Assistance Plan (ICTAP).

• Public Law 103-317, section 115, extends noncompetitive appointment eligibility to competitive service positions for employees of the Criminal Justice Information Services Division of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Department of Justice, who do not relocate with their positions from Washington, DC, to Clarksburg, West Virginia. These individuals serve in positions excepted from the competitive service.

• Employees of the Criminal Justice Information Services Division of the FBI who decline a reassignment from Washington, DC to West Virginia will be separated from their positions. Under the current interim career transition regulations, these excepted service employees are not eligible for the special selection priority provisions, since they apply only to employees in the competitive service. Since under Public Law 103-317, section 115, these employees were given noncompetitive appointment eligibility to other Federal positions, it is clear that it was Congress' intent to help ease the transition of these employees to other Federal employment. These employees are highly specialized, and Federal hiring is at an all time low; thus, granting a variation to the regulations to receive special selection priority is within the spirit of the regulations.

• Variation was granted to avoid undue hardship to the employees of the Criminal Justice Information Services Division of the FBI because of the difficulty that these employees may face in finding other Federal employment at a time during which the Federal Government is undergoing downsizing and restructuring. In addition, the specialized skills that these employees have are not easily transferable to other jobs.

Variation was granted to 5 CFR 330.706(b):

• On December 31, 1996, variation was granted to permit without advertising vacancies, the Department of Health and Human Services, Health Care and Finance Administration (HCFA) to rehire former employees who have retired from HCFA and seek reemployment back to the agency, within 1 year of their separation date. Through this trial retirement program, the agency has an obligation to rehire an annuitant who wants to return within the year. The requirement to advertise the vacancy and select a displaced employee from another agency would negate the programs purpose and work against the agency's efforts to downsize and streamline. A variation is required to 5 CFR 303.706(b) to accomplish this, because the interim ICTAP regulation require agencies to report all competitive service positions when accepting applications from individuals outside the agency. A retired employee is outside the agency.

Section 5.1 of civil service rule V requires that like variations be granted in like circumstances. Therefore, if an agency believes it has a case which parallels one of those described in this notice, a variation may be requested. Agencies are reminded, however, that variation is appropriate only when no other authority exists to remedy the hardship or practical difficulty. All requests for variation must be sent through the headquarters of the agency or department involved and must be transmitted to the Office of Personnel Management for final action. Agencies do not have authority to approve variations.

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Page created October 16, 1997