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Retirement Incentive Deadline Nears
FERS Employees May
Be Eligible for Annuity Supplement

APWU Web News Article #143-12, Nov. 28, 2012

USPS Retirement Incentive Information Newsbreak, 10/01/12:  USPS Offers Retirement Opportunity   To APWU Employees [PDF] LiteBlue:  APWU Incentive at a Glance [PDF] LiteBlue:   Frequently Asked Questions [PDF]

Employees covered by the Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS) who are contemplating retirement should consider that they may be eligible for a FERS Annuity Supplement. With deadlines approaching for APWU-represented employees to qualify for a $15,000 retirement incentive, annuity supplements could influence the choices union members make.

Who is eligible?

• Employees may be eligible for the supplement if they retire at their Minimum Retirement Age (MRA) with 30 years of service. The MRA is from age 55 to 57, based on the employee’s birth year.
  
  
• Employees may be eligible for the supplement if they retire at age 60 with 20 years of service.
  
  
• Employees who accept a Voluntary Early Retirement (VER) offer before reaching their MRA become eligible for the supplement upon reaching their MRA (between ages 55 and 57).

Employees who retire at age 62 or older are ineligible.

APWU Retirees Department For information and assistance concerning retirement, members should contact the APWU Retirees Department.   You can email questions to the APWU Retiree Q & A Center at RetireeQandA@apwu.org. Retirement Counseling - 2009 Pre-arbitration Settlement [PDF] Key to Commonly Used Federal Acronyms Concerning Voluntary Early Retirement, Incentives [PDF]

FERS Annuity Supplements are paid each month until retirees reach age 62.

Click here for information from the USPS [PDF] about how the supplement is calculated, as well as circumstances that may limit the amount.

Additional information can be found in questions #18-24 in Questions and Answers on Benefits, Pay, and Leave Under Voluntary Early Retirement Authority (VERA) [PDF], prepared by the USPS.

Employees contemplating retirement are eligible for retirement counseling and are encouraged to take advantage of the opportunity.

Full-time employees except those in Non-Traditional Full-Time (NTFT) duty assignments of less than 40 hours must indicate their intent to accept the incentive offer on or before Dec. 3, 2012. Part-time employees and full-time employees in NTFT assignments of less than 40 hours must indicate their intent to accept the incentive offer on or before Jan. 4, 2013.

Give Management Your Address

USPS presentation on FERS Annuity Supplements [PDF]

APWU members who are considering retirement are reminded that it is important to make sure that management has the address where you want your incentive payments to be sent.

The incentive retirement agreement stipulates that eligible employees will complete PS Form 3077, Request to Forward Salary Check, and submit it to their employing office. The incentive payments will be distributed to the address provided by the employee.  In the absence of the submission of PS Form 3077 [PDF] , both payments will be mailed to the location where employees worked before they retired or resigned.

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