Originally Posted by
Waves
acl65, Sorry to sound cold, but Boo Hoo for them. We had to sit sideways for several years (four in my case) in a base of the company's choosing, and be on the "B" scale for five years. These guys have lots of choices so to be irked about a 12 month freeze seems pretty trivial. I would hardly call it throwing them under the bus as Hockey said.
Have to disagree with the statement that new hires have lots of choices. Their choices are limited to the company's needs at the time. When I got hired at "Brand X", as I recall the choices were DTW DC9, MEM DC9, and ANC 742. Now, assuming I went to work at "Brand X" because I live in MSP and want to work in MSP (neither of which are true, thank goodness....
), I think it's a good thing that I was afforded the right to bid that ASAP.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for seat locks to reduce excessive bidding around the system and unnecessary training costs. But to lock a new-hire with a family and a house and the whole deal in, say, DTW, into flying out of NYC or LAX (yeah, yeah, I know we don't actually fly out of LAX anymore..) for a year just because those were the company's whimsical needs at the moment is a cruddy deal. Odds are that guy will have applied to Delta because he has an expectation to drive to work.
Not looking out for the "yet to be hired" will bite us in the butt in the near long term. Stuff like this will drive qualified applicants elsewhere.
And... selling the not-yet-hired out has a pretty poor history. See "B Scale"...
Then again, if this last AE is any indicator, most of us are going to end up commuting to a base/seat we don't really want eventually anyway, so...