Obviously someone works on holidays, but if you understand how PBS works, it basically creates a window. For this example we will use Christmas as Dec 23-26th. As long as you work within that window, it's basically the same as working on the holiday. So bid a trip that ends on Dec 23rd or starts the evening of Dec 26th and PBS essentially says "cool, he's worked the holiday" and it won't try to assign another pairing within that holiday window. Someone gets boned further down the list eventually, but in many cases, since we had holiday pay under our old contract, finding holiday coverage wasn't hard.

Our new JCBA does NOT have holiday pay, thus coverage will be mandated to those who are lower in seniority, but the beauty of PBS is that everyone wants something different. I'm single and don't have kids, thus I don't care about working early/late/weekends/getting Wednesdays off to coach baseball practice. I can get more productive pairings and fill my schedule with stuff more senior guys are trying to avoid for whatever reason, and since they'd rather have every weekend off than a holiday for example, I'll still get what I want and for the most part, they will too.

I bid in five minutes and have my schedule by the 10th of the month just how I want it, meanwhile my buddies at Alaska have to fiddlef uck around with their schedule for weeks to get it even close, and have garbage productivity and time off. How is this QOL not wildly apparent to the PBS naysayers? It just makes no sense to me.