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60101100

Office of the General Counsel

S010110

Mr. [xxx][xxx]
Attorneys at Law[address]

Dear Mr. [xxx]

This is in response to our telephone conversation last week regarding the disposition of certain FLSA claims covered by the October 10, 1996 court order in the case of Stephen S. Adams, et al., Plaintiff, v. Charles A. Bowsher, Comptroller General of the United States, et al., Defendants.

OPM accepts your position that the court award is sufficient to establish your clients entitlement to overtime for actual hours of overtime worked dating back two years from the General Accounting Office (GAO) filing date. The court award, as we understand it, only establishes your clients status under the FLSA as nonexempt, but does not establish the fact that any of them actually worked overtime during the time in question. Therefore, you have the burden to establish that your clients, in fact, worked overtime hours during that time frame. As a matter of procedure, you should submit this evidence to the employing agency first, for its determination. OPM will only consider a claim after the agency has made its final decision.

If the agency disputes your right to submit this claim, please present a copy of this letter. In your correspondence to the agency, you may wish to use the following language:

This claimant has submitted an administrative claim for overtime under the Fair Labor Standards Act for settlement pursuant to 31 U.S.C. Sec. 3702, which previously was administered by the General Accounting Office (GAO) and which now, for this purpose, is administered by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM). Until superseded by its own regulations, OPM is following the applicable regulations issued by the GAO, which require that claims be settled initially by the agency out of whose activity the claim arose. Claimants who are not satisfied with the agency's determination may appeal to OPM.

I hope that the information I have provided you is helpful.

Sincerely

Director, Classification Appeals and Fair Labor Standards Act Programs
Office of Merit Systems Oversight

Control Panel