Originally Posted by
RockyBoy
I get that and that is what a lot of us do, but follow me on this for a second.
Say you want to try and make some extra $$$ for the month. You put in a GS for a 2 or 3 day trip. The guy 1 number senior to you gets a 4 day GS worth 22:00. A few hours later you get a 2 day that pays 10:30.
The next week you still feel like working for a little more $$$ so you put in the same preference for a 2 or 3 day GS. Up pops a nice 17:00 3-day and it goes to the guy one number senior to you on his 2nd GS. An hour later another 10:30 2 days shows up and it's yours.
At the end of the month you both did 2 GS's. The guy right above you has 39 hours of GS pay and you have 21. If we had a system that assigned them based on GS hours instead of the actual number of GS's you would have ended up with 27:30 and he would have ended up with 32:30. You would have gotten the 3 day he would have gotten the 2 day.
I know there are a lot more variables that come into play, it just evens out the amount of hours and takes the luck of the crappy trip showing up for any given person out of the equation. If you take the crappy one, you will get another one before the lucky guy who gets the goldmine.
I tend to agree with your logic; however over the long haul I think these examples would tend to even out. This month you didn't get the lucky GS award, but six months later you might, and the guy who got lucky this month instead of you will instead be the guy who got a one-day, while the very next day you got the high-time 3-day.
The bottom line is that our negotiators have a finite number of issues to deal with and associated negotiating capital. Unless your reps get a lot of particular feedback on this issue, it probably isn't worth changing a system that most guys tend to be happy with.