Federal Disability Retirement under FERS or CSRS from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management
by Robert R. McGill, Federal Disability Attorney
It is an adversarial process. One can describe it any way you want: euphemisms are meant to soften the reality of an issue, and so we fool ourselves (often, with the help of Human Resources personnel), who state with innocuous aplomb, “Why don’t you just go ahead and fill out the paperwork for Federal Disability Retirement benefits?”
Thus begins the journey into the abyss of a Federal bureaucracy. It all seems so simple: SF 3107 (or 2801 for CSRS employees, who are becoming rarer by the year), the Application for Immediate Retirement, and Schedules A, B & C. Then, onto the Applicant’s Statement of Disability, where there are some very innocent-looking questions, like, “Fully describe your disease or injury…” Simple enough. Just list the diagnosed medical conditions. Not quite sure what the qualification of “fully” means, but perhaps they just want me to be as detailed as possible. There is, of course, somewhat of a suspicious “warning” in the sentence following, which states that the agency will only consider those disabilities which I “discuss” in the application, but fair enough. It doesn’t sound very adversarial. Simple enough, right?
Then, the next question just asks about how my medical conditions or injuries “interferes” with the performance of your duties, your attendance or conduct. Gee, all that has to be shown is how my medical conditions merely ‘interferes’ with my duties? That is simple enough: I have medical conditions X; I have been working with pain for several years, and quietly doing my job with pain, and though my attendance has been near perfect (because I have been enduring the pain to the detriment of my health throughout the last several years), and though my conduct has never been questioned; nevertheless, since the question merely inquires as to whether or not my medical condition “interferes” with the performance of my duties, let me describe how I have had to work through with pain, go home each evening and every weekend to use my off-time to recuperate, just so that I can drag myself back to work on Monday.
The questions seem straightforward enough. The question, however, is whether the law supports that which such easy questions imply and infer.