Sick Leave & Retirement

There's a rumor going around that employees can no longer use their sick leave toward their retirement. I haven't heard of any changes, but I wanted to make sure since I handle retirement at our facility and have been asked. Thank you!

Often, people misunderstand how unused sick leave affects their MOSERS pension benefit. Unused sick leave does NOT count towards service for retirement ELIGIBILITY. It never has. In other words, it will not make you eligible for retirement sooner than you would have been without it. You must meet both the age and service requirements  –  not counting unused sick leave – to be eligible to retire.

As part of your retirement benefit calculation, we will add one month of additional service for each block of 168 hours of unused sick leave you have at retirement. This will increase the AMOUNT of your benefit payment every month in retirement. Unused sick leave cannot count toward eligibility for retirement or as part of your BackDROP period. That is, the months of unused sick leave will not make you eligible for retirement (or BackDROP) sooner, but will increase the amount of your payment once you have retired.

There are some specific situations in which unused sick leave doesn’t count:
•        MSEP 2011 members: If you leave state employment after January 1, 2018 and prior to being eligible for early or normal retirement, you will get no service credit for unused sick leave.
•       MSEP retirees: If you leave state employment prior to being eligible for early or normal retirement, you will get no service credit for your unused sick leave.
•       Legislators, statewide elected officials, and judges: You do not accrue sick leave.