The 8 ball has been getting "forced" into assignments since the beginning of time!! To a lessor extent every single new hire is "forced" into something. I mean after all we haven't offered 756, 777, or 787 Captain slots yet, so everybody is being "forced" to chose something other than those! Every New Hire is always forced to choose from whatever Manpower Planning wants to offer that week from their pool of unfilled assignments.

Depending on when you were hired your New Hire assignment came with a freeze that had varying degrees of just how "frozen" you were. When I was hired you got a freeze for 2 years. The only way out of the "freeze" was to bid from S/O to F/O or F/O to Captain. So everypilot that got assigned an F/O slot was "frozen" for 2 years in that airplane and seat as there was no way you were going to be able to have the seniority to hold Captain within 2 years.

In my class the bottom portion of the class was "forced" into 727 S/O. So, we got to have the exciting experience of plumbing the 727. Our reward was that we could bid up to the 756, DC-10, 777 or 747 FO seat in our first 2 years (if seniority permitted) while all the folks who took the F/O slots were "forced" to stay in that seat for 2 years.

So, we have pilots that are getting forced into new hire assignments every week, sometimes that is a Captain assingment sometimes it is not. Whatever the New Hire assignments are, some will be happier than others, but those that are not happy are definitely dealing with the Webster's Dictionary definition of a First World Problem!! If anybody didn't know that this was how the system worked and is surprised that they don't get to pick and choose whatever they want, they should not be here.

Complain all you want (after all we are pilots), but don't be surprised when us old folks tell you that is the way it has always been, always will be, and to "get off my lawn!"