Exactly SAS, one of the opening paragraphs in the ops manual was a statement saying it was compulsory for all aircrew to comply with ops manual requirements and regulatory material
You are lucky. In about 1997 our esteemed Chief Executive decided to save some beans by stopping promotion to senior pilot. This was difficult as the career path was written in the operations manual. No problem, being an accountant, he withdrew the ops manual so the evidence didn't exist with the excuse that the ops manual was being rewritten.
About eighteen months later the new version came out; with exactly the same career path.
Guess who retired as a standard captain and missed out on his extra pension.
Not to worry as when I retired I flew for his Chinese partners who saved $10,000s employing me instead of paying him his extortionate rates for a company pilot.