Originally Posted by
contrails
The information was right in their explanation; you're not thinking it all the way through.
They acknowledged that the last three hours of SC were almost always a freebie.
That translates into, 95% chance of not working an assignment, and taking three hours out of the following day's LC time.
Make no mistake about it, there are several reasons they would choose to cut down SC:
- Additional LC time as mentioned above
- Most reserves don't quite get to the max SC each month anyway, so they will use this slack to assign more SC periods but for less time per period to be more efficient. Efficient in this case means less greenslips.
I thought it through just fine. While you technically spend 3 more hours on LC, it’s not actually any additional liability. Any trip that you are eligible for on the extra three hours of long call the next day could have also been assigned during the last 3 hours of your 12 hour short call. Take the example of a 1000-2200 SC. If at 2000 they get a 0800 report for tomorrow, they call you and release you from the rest of your short call period for the 0800 trip. Under the 9 hour SC period you are back on long call and get the same trip with the same notice.
Also if reserves don’t get to the max SCs today with 12 hour windows, why don’t they assign more SCs now? They have the slack and there’s no cap each day. If they wanted more they could do it with 9 or 12 hour windows. It doesn’t make a difference.