Furloughs at Fermilab

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Vacation Usage Information

The sacrifice we are all making by taking unpaid furloughs will only be effective in cutting costs this year if we also take our normal vacation days, rather than letting them accrue, or add up. Why? Because when an employee takes vacation, the cost is charged to Fermilab’s vacation "bank" not to the current budget. If we accrue vacation, in a given year Fermilab must pay for days worked PLUS vacation days, which increases costs. When we use vacation days, we are paid from the vacation bank, bringing costs down.

This means, for the Laboratory to gain the full benefit of the furlough, each employee’s vacation balance on the last pay advice of September 2008 must be equal to or less than his or her balance on the last pay advice of January 2008. For example this means that if a person has 20 days of accrued vacation at the end of January and has 24 days at the end of September that person will lose four days of vacation. In other words, we will need to use all the vacation that we accrue between the end of January and the end of September. We can’t put any additional vacation in the bank.

There is one exception to this requirement. If the amount of accrued vacation a person has on the January 2008 pay advice is less than three times the person’s monthly accrual rate, the maximum that person will be able to have on the September 2008 pay advice will be three times the monthly accrual rate in effect at the end of January. For example, if the accrual rate is 1.5 days per month, and the amount of accrued vacation at the end of January is less than 4.5 days, the maximum allowed at the end of September will be 4.5 days.

In order to count toward the September 30, 2008 balance, employees must take vacation by September 21, 2008, due to time and leave-sheet cutoff dates.

If funding levels are restored during the eight-month furlough period, this vacation accrual usage requirement will remain in effect through the fiscal year 2008.