As you may recall, late last year Congress included a provision in the annual National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) to establish a generous new taxpayer-funded benefit for employees of the federal government – namely, 12 weeks of paid parental leave.
The new paid leave program, which confers a benefit the same as if the employee was taking accrued annual leave, goes into effect for births occurring or adoption or foster placements made after October 1, 2020. On August 10, the government Office of Personnel Management (OPM), the independent federal agency that manages the government’s civilian workforce and has responsibility for administering the new paid leave program, published implementing regulations in the form of an interim final rule (IFR).
While the new family paid leave program does not apply to private sector employers, given that federal employee benefits sometimes become a model for benefits in state or local jurisdictions or in the private sector, we thought it would be worthwhile to provide a high-level summary of the program and OPM’s recently published IFR.
Members of the Center for Workplace Compliance (CWC) can read more here.