Absenteeism Report Irks Federal Employees

But the full story behind the AWOL numbers is more complicated, according to critics and agency officials.

At VA, the department's 273,000 employees worked about 2.5 billion hours over the period, said spokeswoman Lisette Mondello. The 8 million AWOL hours is a tiny amount in comparison, amounting to one-third of 1 percent of all hours worked, she said. Mondello said the department tracks AWOL hours "meticulously" to let employees know that lateness and unapproved absenteeism won't be tolerated.

The report "gives the impression that employees at the VA are not there and it's the furthest from the truth," she said. "We take accountability very, very seriously."

At Treasury, about 96 percent of the AWOL hours were logged by Internal Revenue Service employees, many of whom are part-time or seasonal workers who have accrued little or no sick leave or vacation time, said spokeswoman Brookly McLaughlin.

"This is an important issue, and we at Treasury continue to look for ways to ensure proper identification of employee absences," McLaughlin said. "We work to train employees and management to address these issues."

J. David Cox, the national secretary-treasurer of the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest federal employee union, said some federal workers taking approved leave -- vacation, family and medical leave or leave without pay, for example -- may be marked down temporarily as AWOL until paperwork is completed.

"It's a classic example of how you can pull out numbers if you are trying to prove some point," Cox said.

Andrea Brooks, an AFGE national vice president, said the study would have been more meaningful if it showed disciplinary moves made by agencies. "No agency is going to let employees rack up hundreds of hours of leave without permission without taking some action," she said.

Even public servants with the best of intentions are not always where they are supposed to be. Coburn, for instance, has missed 58 of 1283 votes, or 4.5 percent, during his nearly four years in the Senate, according to congressional records. In six years in the House, he missed 232 of 3741 votes, or 6.2 percent.

Coburn said he missed 40 Senate votes when he was being treated for cancer last year. As for the missed House votes, he said: "It's probably because of the same reasons I miss votes on Monday nights -- because flights get in late."

Staff researcher Madonna Lebling contributed to this report.