WIGIs, or within-grade increases, are fairly routine increases in salary for GS employees. They are typically earned by service in a particular grade for a particular period of time. The WIGI is only earned if an employee has maintained an “acceptable level of competence” (ALOC) during the entire “waiting period”.
When an employee is denied a WIGI, they have a right to appeal the denial to the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB). However, the employee must first appeal through an Agency grievance process.

A federal employee who is denied their WIGI can almost assuredly expect that they will be facing some performance based action – placement on a PIP (Performance Improvement Period), removal or demotion – in the near future. Thus, litigating the denial of the WIGI can be crucial to the employee’s future employment.

The WIGI appeal is what is called in legal parlance, a de novo review, (meaning from the beginning). The MSPB reviews the Agency’s decision to deny the WIGI from the beginning – looking in depth at the performance history of the employee over the waiting period for the WIGI.

The burden is on the Agency to show that the employee is not performing at an acceptable level of competence. Ultimately, the Agency will have to show the existence of performance standards, and how the employee failed to meet those standards in order to prevail. The burden is never on the employee to prove that their performance was acceptable.

Challenging a WIGI is almost always a financial setback for the federal employee in the short-term: the cost of litigating before the MSPB almost never equals the small increase in pay an employee stands to recover if successful.

However, many Federal employees fail to realize that it is often their own Federal government career which is truly at stake. in the long-term, challenging the denial of the WIGI may prove invaluable to preventing an Agency from taking a performance based action, or in developing a strategy to fight an imminent performance based action.

If you would like to discuss a recent denial of a WIGI with an attorney who practices before the MSPB, please contact the Attig Law Firm today.