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Washington, D.C.—In the largest case of its kind ever in the federal sector, the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) has secured priority consideration for promotion for more than 1,400 Internal Revenue Service (IRS) employees. They were unfairly screened out for possible advancement by the IRS’s use of an improper promotion criterion over the past two years.

Priority consideration entitles an employee to be considered for a promotion before any other candidates, and it places a heavy burden on management to select the priority candidate.

“This is a major victory for every IRS employee—and it was achieved directly and solely as the result of NTEU’s work on their behalf,” said NTEU President Colleen M. Kelley. “NTEU has set yet another federal sector benchmark,” she said, adding that the union at every level will closely monitor the implementation to ensure that promotions are properly awarded.

NTEU filed a successful national grievance over the IRS practice of using a so-called ‘good potential’ criterion in considering employees for promotion—despite the fact that there was no reference to such a criterion in the parties’ contract.

An arbitrator ruled that NTEU had never agreed to its use, that management had committed an unfair labor practice by implementing it, and that its use amounted to a prohibited personnel practice. The Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA) rejected an IRS appeal of that decision.

President Kelley noted that the IRS had the opportunity to deal with this issue through the handling of local grievances, but refused to work effectively with NTEU local chapters on the matter.

There were about 60 local grievances; the IRS’s actions in rebuffing efforts to handle the matters with NTEU chapters led to the filing of a national grievance—the result of which was that the IRS had to review some 12,000 promotion applications, rather than just the relative handful it was facing in the local grievance process.

“The IRS, and indeed every agency NTEU deals with,” President Kelley said, “needs to understand that this union will use every opportunity and tool we have available to us on behalf of those we represent.”

NTEU is the largest independent federal union, representing some 150,000 federal workers in 30 agencies and departments, including 90,000 in the IRS.