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In the United States' military, leave is permission to be away from one's unit for a specific period of time. This includes all six service branches of the military and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). [1]
Under normal circumstances, all personnel are granted 30 days of leave per year. This time is usually used for vacations and other extended time periods away from the service that are longer than three days or need to be taken in the middle of the week. Leave is accumulated at the rate of 2.5 days per month. [1] A member's leave is annotated in the monthly Leave and Earnings Statement.
Under , civilian federal employees who are reservists are allowed “15 days” of annual paid leave for reserve or National Guard training. [2] Prior to 2000, the Justice Department, as had other federal agencies, included days employees were not scheduled to work but would be at reserve training when calculating how much leave an employee used. This miscalculation resulted in the federal appeal of Butterbaugh v. Department of Justice, 336 F.3d 1332 (Fed. Cir. 2003). [3] The Butterbaugh Decision changed things for these reservists and would result in many more federal employees finding their reservist time wrongly charged.
Leave and passes are terms to describe days off work. A typical weekend day off is also known as a regular pass. Up to four consecutive days off can be either leave days or pass days. Leave days are deducted from the Service Member's 30 annual days off. Pass days are not deducted. Five or more days off must be deducted as leave. Leave and pass days can now be taken consecutively, as long as the Service Member is in the local area to sign back in from or on leave; for example, a Service Member may put in for a 4-day pass over the 4th of July weekend, and utilize leave starting the day after the 4-day weekend, as long as the service member personally signs in or out on leave. [4]
If leave is taken through a weekend, Saturday and Sunday are also deducted as leave days. For example, a Service Member who takes leave from Thursday to the following Tuesday will be deducted six days of leave for Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday.
Passes can also be awarded to Service Members for particular achievements. Although passes may be taken for up to 4 days, 3 day passes are granted on most occasions. When 3 day passes are awarded, they are most commonly taken over a weekend giving the Service Member one duty day off. There is a process in getting a leave pass for the Service Member which will be charged by the Department.
One or 2 day passes can also be granted for exceptional circumstances during the duty week; for example, a Service Member can be given a pass for a Wednesday in order to accompany their several children for school physicals, or a Wednesday-Thursday if the Service Member is having to travel overnight for an appointment or event.
Absent without leave (AWOL) is considered employee misconduct and an attendance issue. This means a Service Member is absent from his/her assigned duty and the absences was not authorized and/or was denied.
The four most common types of leave are: [5]
Leave time will "rollover" from year to year. A servicemember may carry up to 60 days of leave before he or she must take it. Leave in excess of 60 days is known as "Use or Lose": if the servicemember does not use the excess leave by October 1 (the beginning of the new fiscal and training year), he or she will lose it (this was extended from 60 days to 75 from June 27, 2008 [6] until 30 September 2015 [7] ). Under certain circumstances, the use or lose threshold may be extended to 80 days, if the member is unable to take leave due to duty requirements, usually because of a deployment. If a servicemember leaves the military without having used all his or her leave time, the unused days are paid for at the member's regular rate of pay upon separation. Conversely, though the situation is less common, pay will be deducted as excess leave on separation if too many days were taken.
Block leave refers to time when most or all of the unit takes leave at the same time (as a "block"). Commonly, block leave time is allowed during the summer and Christmas holidays, and before and after deployments. [5]
Prior to separation or retirement from the military, a member may take the remainder of the leave accumulated. For instance, if a member's separation/retirement date is June 30, and the member has 30 days of leave accrued, the member may go on "terminal leave" beginning June 1. All outprocessing from the service would need to be accomplished prior to June 1. Once entering "terminal leave", he/she would have no further military duties, but would still collect a paycheck and other entitlements such as basic allowance for housing, basic allowance for subsistence, and medical coverage, through the official separation/retirement date of June 30. [5]
A pass is permission to be away from one's military unit for a limited period of time. Time away on a pass is not counted against leave, the annual allotment of days off from duty.
The labour law concept of leave, specifically paid leave or, in some countries' long-form, a leave of absence, is an authorised prolonged absence from work, for any reason authorised by the workplace. When people "take leave" in this way, they are usually taking days off from their work that have been pre-approved by their employer in their contracts of employment. Labour laws normally mandate that these paid-leave days be compensated at either 100% of normal pay, or at a very high percentage of normal days' pay, such as 75% or 80%. A furlough is a type of leave.
A military discharge is given when a member of the armed forces is released from their obligation to serve. Each country's military has different types of discharge. They are generally based on whether the persons completed their training and then fully and satisfactorily completed their term of service. Other types of discharge are based on factors such as the quality of their service, whether their service had to be ended prematurely due to humanitarian or medical reasons, whether they had been found to have drug or alcohol dependency issues and whether they were complying with treatment and counseling, and whether they had demerits or punishments for infractions or were convicted of any crimes. These factors affect whether they will be asked or allowed to re-enlist and whether they qualify for benefits after their discharge.
The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 (FMLA) is a United States labor law requiring covered employers to provide employees with job-protected, unpaid leave for qualified medical and family reasons. The FMLA was a major part of President Bill Clinton's first-term domestic agenda, and he signed it into law on February 5, 1993. The FMLA is administered by the Wage and Hour Division of the United States Department of Labor.
The Air Force Reserve Command (AFRC) is a major command (MAJCOM) of the United States Air Force, with its headquarters at Robins Air Force Base, Georgia. It is the federal Air Reserve Component (ARC) of the U.S. Air Force, consisting of commissioned officers and enlisted airmen. AFRC also plays an integral role in the day-to-day Air Force mission and is not strictly a force held in reserve for possible war or contingency operations. AFRC also supports the United States Space Force through the 310th Space Wing, pending the creation of a space reserve component.
The Defense Commissary Agency (DeCA), headquartered at Fort Lee (Virginia), is an agency of the United States Department of Defense (DoD) that operates nearly 240 commissaries worldwide. American military commissaries sell groceries and household goods to active-duty, Guard, Reserve, and retired members of all eight uniformed services of the United States and eligible members of their families at cost plus surcharge, saving authorized patrons thousands of dollars compared to civilian supermarkets.
Per diem or daily allowance is a specific amount of money that an organization gives an individual, typically an employee, per day to cover living expenses when travelling on the employer's business.
The United States Navy Reserve (USNR), known as the United States Naval Reserve from 1915 to 2005, is the Reserve Component (RC) of the United States Navy. Members of the Navy Reserve, called reservists, are enrolled in the Selected Reserve (SELRES), the Individual Ready Reserve (IRR), the Full Time Support (FTS), or the Retired Reserve program.
The Federal Employees' Retirement System (FERS) is the retirement system for employees within the United States civil service. FERS became effective January 1, 1987, to replace the Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS) and to conform federal retirement plans in line with those in the private sector.
The Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA) is an agency of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. It is responsible for administering the department's programs that provide financial and other forms of assistance to veterans, their dependents, and survivors. Major benefits include Veterans' compensation, Veterans' pension, survivors' benefits, rehabilitation and employment assistance, education assistance, home loan guaranties, and life insurance coverage.
A reservist is a person who is a member of a military reserve force. They are otherwise civilians, and in peacetime have careers outside the military. Reservists usually go for training on an annual basis to refresh their skills. This person is usually a former active-duty member of the armed forces, and they remain a reservist either voluntarily, or by obligation. In some countries such as Israel, Norway, Finland, Singapore, and Switzerland, reservists are conscripted soldiers who are called up for training and service when necessary.
The Servicemembers Civil Relief Act is a United States federal law that protects soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines, coast guardsmen, and commissioned officers in the Public Health Service and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration from being sued while in active military service of their country and for up to a year after active duty, as well as U.S. citizens serving with allied military forces for the duration of a military conflict involving the United States.
A Leave and Earnings Statement, generally referred to as an LES, is a document given on a monthly basis to members of the United States military which documents their pay and leave status on a monthly basis.
United States military pay is money paid to members in the United States Armed Forces. The amount of pay may vary by the member's rank, time in the military, location duty assignment, and by some special skills the member may have.
The Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act of 1994 was passed by U.S. Congress and signed into law by U.S. President Bill Clinton on October 13, 1994 to protect the civilian employment of active and reserve military personnel in the United States called to active duty. The law applies to all United States uniformed services and their respective reserve components.
Annual leave is paid time off work granted by employers to employees to be used for whatever the employee wishes. Depending on the employer's policies, differing number of days may be offered, and the employee may be required to give a certain amount of advance notice, may have to coordinate with the employer to be sure that staffing is adequately covered during the employee's absence, and other requirements may have to be met. The vast majority of countries today mandate a minimum amount of paid annual leave by law.
Temporary duty travel (TDY), also known as temporary additional duty (TAD), is a designation reflecting an United States Armed Forces Service member's travel or other assignment at a location other than the traveler's permanent duty station as authorized by the Joint Travel Regulations. This type of secondment is usually of relatively short duration, typically from two to 189 days in length. Not all agencies use this designation.
Conscription in Finland is part of a general compulsion for national military service for all adult males defined in the 127§ of the Constitution of Finland.
The United States military formerly excluded gay men, bisexuals, and lesbians from service. In 1993, the United States Congress passed, and President Bill Clinton signed a law instituting the policy commonly referred to as "Don't ask, don't tell" (DADT) which allowed gay, lesbian, and bisexual people to serve as long as they did not reveal their sexual orientation. Although there were isolated instances in which service personnel were met with limited success through lawsuits, efforts to end the ban on openly gay, lesbian, and bisexual people serving either legislatively, or through the courts initially proved unsuccessful.
The reserve components of the United States Armed Forces are military organizations whose members generally perform a minimum of 39 days of military duty per year and who augment the active duty military when necessary. The reserve components are also referred to collectively as the National Guard and Reserve.