Excessive Absence and the Third Cook Factor

By Barbara Haga, October 16, 2019

In several classes recently, I have had questions regarding the Cook factors and what makes one of these cases successful. Just to make sure we are all on the same sheet of music, here is a quick review of what the Board wrote in Cook v. Army, 18 MSPR 610 (1984). The Army challenged the AJ’s determination that Cook should not have been suspended for 40 days as a result of his roughly 1000 hours of approved absence over three years.

In its petition for review, the Army based its argument on guidance in the Federal Personnel Manual where OPM had set out conditions under which action could be taken on approved leave.

FPM Chapter 752, Subchapter 3, paragraph 3-2b(4)(c) provides an exception to the general rule that an adverse action cannot be based on an employee’s use of approved leave. The following three criteria must be met to satisfy the exception:

(1) The record showed that the employee was absent for compelling reasons beyond his or her control so that agency approval or disapproval was immaterial because the employee could not be on the job;

(2) The absence or absences continued beyond a reasonable time and the employee was warned that adverse action might be initiated unless the employee became available for duty on a regular, full-time or part-time basis; and

(3) The agency showed that the position needed to be filled by an employee available for duty on a regular, full-time or part-time basis.

The Army was not successful in getting the decision on Cook overturned, but gave us the decision we still talk about 35 years later regarding excessive absence.

Assuming that your employee missed the requisite amount of time on sick leave, annual leave, or LWOP, and you properly warned the individual that if he/she did not become available for regular attendance at work that action, up to and including removal, could be forthcoming, then you have to talk about the impact of those absences.

In the following cases, the agencies were successful in demonstrating what happened when the employee was absent.

Gartner v. Army, 107 FMSR 200 (MSPB 2007)

Gartner was a GS-4 Medical Support Assistant in the General Surgery Ward at an Army Community Hospital in Fort Stewart, GA. It is important to note that two blocks of hours that the Army had relied upon in removing Gartner were not sustained. She had had prior discipline twice as a result of a period of absence, so those hours were discounted. Also, this decision was issued in 2007 when an agency had to have enough LWOP to take an action, before McCauley v. Interior, 111 FMSR 224 (2011) was issued  – which allowed counting of all approved absences, both paid and unpaid. Gartner’s sick leave hours were not counted to sustain the charge. Thus, in the two Gartner decisions, the period that was accepted to support the charge of excessive absence was 252 3/4 hours of LWOP and 80 3/4 hours of AWOL for a total of 333 1/2 hours of unscheduled absences.

In the initial decision (AT-0752-06-0156-I-1, 2006), the AJ discussed the following:

The appellant works in an Army Hospital where her presence is needed at work to provide much-needed patient care, such as patient check-in, patient care, and appointment scheduling. AR, Tab 4C. Because her absences were unscheduled or of indefinite duration, it made it impossible to hire someone to temporary fill her position. AR, Tab 4C. The appellant presented no evidence to the contrary.

The Board decision quoted further testimony:

When you are not here it places an extreme burden on the rest of our General Surgery/Urology staff whom must then do your job as well as their own job. We are a very busy clinic seeing over 600 patients a month on average.

As a GS-4, Gartner obviously was not running the Urology Clinic, but the Army could talk about 1) other people who provided patient care had to stop what they were doing to cover her duties, and 2) because her absences were intermittent and of an indefinite duration, they could not hire someone to cover those duties. These arguments were sufficient even though only half of the hours included in the original removal notice were actually sustained. The AJ did not question whether 333 hours out of the original 515 hours cited still had such a negative impact on the clinic.

Zellars v Air Force, No. 06-3321 (Fed. Cir. 2006)

Zellars was employed by the Air Force as an Office Assistant, GS-0318-5.  She was removed in 2005 after over 800 hours of LWOP in that leave year and another 817 hours the prior leave year.  Zellars’ job was Secretary for the Maintenance Engineering Section. Her second-line supervisor testified that the section was customer-oriented and the secretary needed to be in the office to answer phones and communicate requests for service, among other things. He added that Zellars’ absence placed an unreasonable burden on other employees because they were then obligated to perform her work in addition to their own. The AJ summarized the information in the Initial Decision (DC-0752-05-0793-I-1, 2006) regarding the third Cook factor as follows:

The agency also has shown that it needed the appellant’s position filled by an employee available for duty on a regular basis and that it had reason under the circumstances to believe that the appellant was unable because of the continuing effects of her various medical ailments to return to duty on a regular basis to fulfill that requirement.

Like in Gartner, the agency did not produce elaborate information to explain why the absence of their clerical support person was a problem, but they were successful before the Board in showing that her services were needed.  The Board (107 FMSR 171) denied the PFR filed by Zellars and the Federal Circuit did not disturb the AJ’s findings.

Next month, we will continue looking at issues that arise in connection with excessive absence cases.