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SF 3112B: Your Friend the Supervisor or Just a Friendly Boss


SF 3112B: Your Friend the Supervisor or Just a Friendly Boss

When applying for FERS Disability Retirement benefits with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM), one’s immediate boss or supervisor, and therefore the employing Federal Agency or the Postal Service itself, will be informed of your request for early retirement because of the SF 3112B, which is a required OPM form among several others forms that come in a bundle of paperwork, also known as the Federal Disability Retirement Application Package.

The Standard Form 3112B is the "Supervisor's Statement" about the Federal employee's past job performance, the nature of the applicant’s job, any sick leave taken, accommodations requested, and even the employee’s real or perceived work attitudes, that is, any information the boss will probably want to mention about the applicant.  There is nothing a paper form can't take in writing. Also, from a supervisor’s perspective, the form is often seen as an opportunity to help the employee get to qualify for FERS Disability Retirement. For other bosses, unfortunately, it’s also an opportunity to do what many Agencies really seek to do as an informal policy, that is, to save themselves money by avoiding future financial liability, and, therefore, to get your disability claim denied.

Because the 3112B form must be completed by the Supervisor of the applicant, it is therefore presumed that “others” at the agency and workplace will come to know that the Federal or Postal employee has filed for Federal Disability Retirement benefits.  Federal workplaces often work as a network of information and misinformation and the Applicant should already be perfectly aware of this (concerns about medical privacy are also addressed in other short posts).  

Often, the question is asked as to “when” the Supervisor should be informed of the employee’s application.  This can be a very touchy issue.  Because the Federal or Postal employee contemplating filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits often feels a certain sense of loyalty, especially if the Supervisor has been “good” to him or her, the instinctive sense is to inform the Supervisor sooner, rather than later.  But remember that loyalty in the Federal government is almost always a unilateral approach; it runs one way — from the individual to the agency; rarely is it bilateral, where it runs both ways.

Further, once a Federal or Postal employee contemplates filing for Federal Disability Retirement, the loyalty of the Supervisor is normally seen as connected to, and only to, the agency and it’s financial interests; and the very fact that an employee has mentioned the term “Federal or Postal Disability Retirement” is often the turning point of any connective loyalty.  

Loyalty is what one is doing now and for the future, not what one has done in the past.  Such words may invoke a sad truth, but one which should be heeded.  

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill Law Firm


Image by Tumisu from Pixabay



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