Grassley Expresses Alarm at Thousands of Federal Workers on Paid Leave for Months

Press Release

Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa today expressed alarm at the findings of a new report, issued at his request, documenting that tens of thousands of federal employees were on paid leave for at least one month and several hundred employees for nine months to three years, over a recent three-year period.

"These employees should be working for the taxpayers, not getting paid to stay home," Grassley said. "Paid leave is an excuse for managers not to manage and put off a decision on what to do with employees accused of misconduct or who blow the whistle or dispute a personnel action. The mentality seems to be out of sight, out of mind, and that's not the way to run the government or act responsibly with tax dollars."

Grassley commented on a report he sought from the non-partisan Government Accountability Office (GAO), which found that over a three-year period, data covering about 60 percent of all civilian federal employees found that more than 57,000 employees were on paid administrative leave for more than a month, costing $700 million in salary alone, excluding benefits. About 4,000 of the employees were off the job for three months to a year and 263 employees for one to three years. The most common reason cited for periods of extended administrative leave to GAO was "personnel matters" such as investigations into misconduct and "pending administrative actions."

Grassley said the practice of paid leave has been little-documented until now. He sought the study because of numerous instances of paid leave that came to light through his oversight and investigative work. Sometimes the leave is used to retaliate against a whistleblowing employee, and other times it's used to distance an agency from an employee accused of misconduct while an investigation drags on, Grassley said.

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