Originally Posted by
Dave Fitzgerald
But, just to clarify, these numbers are whatever the company wants them to be. There used to be staffing rules in old contracts. Now, it's whatever the company wants.
So, don't be enamored of the min/max numbers too much, they set them where ever and may not mean much of anything. Has to back fill? Only if they want to. As many have seen, there doesn't seem to be a real staffing model or logic to what they do.
I was told that it's also based on training capacity. So they may let a bunch of people bid out of a seat, but not backfill because they don't have enough training slots for a few months. Then what they do is on the next bid they post a vacancy with a new MIN and fill those positions instead of just holding everything static and letting backfills happen naturally. They are aware of the 92 day training/pay/bump thing that we didn't have in the old contract so they are trying to avoid paying people if they don't have to or people bumping into other seats forcing even more training events.
It may not look like they know what they are doing, but it's an art form to do it given the number of variables involved.
At least that was the explanation I was given.