Unaccompanied Children Program Detailees Receive Biweekly Premium Pay Cap Waiver
On April 22, 2021, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) retroactively waived the biweekly cap on premium pay for employees performing work in support of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Unaccompanied Children (UC) program. Covered federal employees are subject instead to an annual premium pay cap for the full period they work in support of the HHS UC program.
In March 2021, as FEDmanager previously reported, OPM issued an urgent memorandum for current federal employees to volunteer for details of 120 days to the HHS UC program to care for and place unaccompanied children who entered the United States at the southern border. Since then, agencies have inquired with OPM about premium pay for employees detailed to the program.
Federal employees are generally covered by a biweekly premium pay cap. That biweekly cap is replaced by an annual pay premium pay cap for federal employees who perform work in connection with an emergency that involves a direct threat to life or property. To trigger the biweekly cap waiver, OPM regulations require that two determinations are made. First, either OPM or an agency head must determine that such an emergency exists. Second, an agency head must a determine that an employee is performing work in connection with the qualifying emergency or its aftermath.
OPM determined, “[t]he unaccompanied children who are being assisted by HHS following entry are subject to conditions posing a direct threat to their lives, as they are in need of food, shelter, supervision, and protection, and unable to provide such resources themselves.” On those grounds, OPM determined a qualifying emergency exists for the purposes of the premium pay cap determination. Thus, “any employees determined by the agency head to be performing work in connection with this emergency are covered by the annual premium pay cap.”
The waiver of the biweekly premium pay limitation will apply retroactively to the first day of the pay period detailees began working for the HHS UC program and continue until the employees return to their home agencies and resume their normal duties.
