The Office of Personnel Management said it has cancelled a Bush administration personnel rule that would allow some high-performing General Schedule employees to be promoted faster.

In November, OPM announced it would remove a decades-old requirement that employees serve 52 weeks in a grade before being considered for promotion to the next higher grade. But the Obama administration delayed that rule change in the spring, and on Tuesday OPM announced in the Federal Register it would not repeal the so-called time-in-grade rule.

OPM said it will consider repealing the time-in-grade rule as part of a broader review and overhaul of personnel policies planned for this fall, according to the Federal Register notice.

"It would be more productive to consider the merits of the time-in-grade issue as part of a more comprehensive review of pay, performance and staffing issues than to regulate this particular issue in piecemeal fashion," OPM said in the notice.

The 57-year-old time-in-grade rule was established during the Korean War to prevent a buildup of civilian employees with elevated grade levels, as happened during World War II.

The Bush administration decided in November to repeal the rule, effective in March, on grounds that modern qualification standards for promotion make excessive promotions unlikely. OPM officials at the time said that highly qualified, newly hired employees sometimes have been shut out of job opportunities because they didn't have enough time in their current grades.

But unions strongly urged the incoming Obama administration to reverse that decision. The National Treasury Employees Union supports retention of the time-in-grade rule, saying its repeal could allow managers to promote their favorites and ignore objective criteria for promotions. NTEU in February asked the Obama administration to review the regulation and keep the rule.

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