Capping Leave Accrual

[FruminousBandersnatch]

I just got an email from a friend saying her company sent her a message saying that she'd reached the maximum amount of accrued leave and would not be accruing any more until she uses some. Leaving aside the obvious solution to this problem, I'd like to ask the HR and Legal minds if it's legal for a company to cap accrued leave and not pay it out.

Thanks in advance.

[Anonymous]

Must be talking about Leidos. Yes it's legal to not allow more to accrue.

[Anonymous]

How is that any different than use or lose?

[Anonymous]

Don't most companies cap leave? It's so they aren't hit with a huge financial burden if someone leaves/retires with 1000+ hours they have to pay out.

I work for the fed government. If you get over 240 (or maybe it's 250?) you can't accrue more annual leave. They won't pay it out. Dh (fed too) loses leave every year because of this. I wish they would pay us out. Mainly because if you're hitting use or lose annual leave it's because your job isn't allowing you to take many vacations due to the difficulty.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Don't most companies cap leave? It's so they aren't hit with a huge financial burden if someone leaves/retires with 1000+ hours they have to pay out.

I work for the fed government. If you get over 240 (or maybe it's 250?) you can't accrue more annual leave. They won't pay it out. Dh (fed too) loses leave every year because of this. I wish they would pay us out. Mainly because if you're hitting use or lose annual leave it's because your job isn't allowing you to take many vacations due to the difficulty.

Agree, most companies only let you roll over a certain amount of leave time. Also, there are a significant number of companies that do not pay out unused vacation time.

[Anonymous]

It's been "'use it or lose it" everywhere I've worked.

[Anonymous]

Very common. And legal.

[Anonymous]

Ours is use or lose, beyond a certain point. Only sick leave accrues.

[Anonymous]

I'm not an employment lawyer, but I think they only way it might *not* be legal is if this is only directed towards certain individuals (e.g. person X can't accrue more leave but person Y can). Otherwise, if it's a company-wide policy that is enforced across the board, then PPs are right, it's legal. I am now on employer #5 (all private companies, mix of huge house-hold names and smaller firms), and there was only one employer that let you carry over/accrue as much leave as you wanted (however, they didn't pay it out, if you resigned you lost your leave, which again is legal). My current employer, for example, only allows you to carry over 5 days, and then those must be used by March 15th of the following year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Must be talking about Leidos. Yes it's legal to not allow more to accrue.

This is perfectly legal and common. Saic/leidos was unusual with the leave payouts. Fortunately, they have not cut the maximum leave balance. It remains at 480 he's for long term employees.

[Anonymous]

My org does this too but then does not have use/lose at end of year.

[Anonymous]

Ours is capped too - I just realized last week that I'm currently at 194.5 hours of vacation time saved and the max is 200. So I'm taking tomorrow off and probably a day next week so that I won't lose anything. (Then I have a week's vacation so that will help for awhile.)

[Anonymous]

Senior executives in the federal government have caps at 720 hours.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Senior executives in the federal government have caps at 720 hours.

I hate this rule, partly because employees are held to 240 hours. Also because leave accrual for the whole agency is enormous. It cuts into the budget when there are numerous retirements at a small agency.

[Anonymous]

SRA International did this a year or so ago. They also lowered the accrual cap for some employees, which really stunk.

Too bad!