Opinion ID: 445598
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Promotions Above the Journeyman Level

Text: 17 Even if an employee is rated ready for promotion to a supervisory or expert position, the promotion does not automatically follow since actual promotion depends on the availability of positions. 18 For actual promotion to the expert nonsupervisory position, an employee might be blocked by the 50/20 rule. In 1969 and 1970, the Civil Service Commission issued a report that there was only enough expert level work to support a percentage of 50 percent of the field examiners at the GS-13 expert level and a percentage of 20 percent of the field attorneys at the GS-14 expert level. The NLRB then decided that no more than 50 percent of the nonsupervisory field examiners and 20 percent of the field attorneys in any single regional office could be placed at the expert level. (The percentage for expert level attorneys was raised to 30 percent in 1977.) Thus, since the inception of the 50/20 rule, employees rated ready for promotion to the nonsupervisory expert level positions have been forced to wait varying lengths of time. The NLRB has mitigated the harshness of the 50/20 rule through transfers and quality within grade increases for blocked employees. 2 19 Similarly, a rating of well qualified for a supervisory position does not lead automatically to such a promotion. The collective bargaining agreements provide that first consideration for a vacancy goes to persons rated well qualified in the office where the vacancy occurs, as well as to persons not in the office but who are rated well qualified and who have asked to be considered for supervisory vacancies of the particular office in which the vacancy occurs. If consideration of these employees leads to a minimum number of candidates, the selection may be made without soliciting other applicants. If not, the position is advertised throughout the NLRB. The General Counsel of the NLRB makes the final selection.