Arbitration Award of Retroactive Promotion and Backpay

An employee, who had been employed in a grade GS-5 position for 8 months, did not receive a promotion in a career-ladder position until 13 other trainees were promoted after 1 year in the career-ladder position. An arbitrator found that the agency was not justified in delaying the employee's career-ladder promotion because the agency was obligated to provide a full range of training to the employee. In addition, the agency should not have delayed the grievant's promotion until other trainee employees were ready for promotion, since this violated contractual equal opportunity in the promotion program. GAO holds, however, that there is no agency regulation which mandates that employees receive career-ladder promotions within a certain timeframe. Since the agency and the union had not agreed upon a specific promotion policy and there has been no violation of a nondiscretionary agency policy or regulation, the award of a retroactive promotion and backpay was improper and may not be implemented.