Originally Posted by
20Fathoms
These are excellent questions and I hope they make the rules more clear. I’ve been confused as well. As a data point this last week I started a 3 day block of LC. I looked at what SCs were on offer and it had 4 available, all with 4 day targets. Well there were no people in 4 day buckets and the only two in 3 day buckets were me and a senior guy.
The available SCs were: 0800, 0900, 1300, and 2359.
I put in preferences for “if needed” thinking as Fangs said that it becomes a yellow slip if you are needed. I was starting a block so 1000 was my earliest report time but I know that yellow slips trump that so I figured I could get the 0800 or 0900. I preferenced 0900, 0800, 1300, 2359 in that order. Well lo and behold I got the scheduling special of last choice😕.
I can only think of 2 possible reasons: 1) Your SC preferences can’t really become a yellow slip and therefore can’t break the 10 hour protection coming off an off day and in addition the senior bubba preferenced the 1300 SC. Or 2) Scheduling doesn’t pay any attention to this at all and randomly doles these out before moving on to the next fire.
A few questions: Will a preference break the 10 hr protection coming off an off day? Will a straight yellow SC? Also if you submit a straight yellow for a SC for a specific time, will they either award that or leave you alone, or once you raise your hand for SC can they assign you any SC they want?
An IF NEEDED slip cannot violate any of the PWA rules. Only a YS can waive contractual time limits.
If you YS SC, they can only assign you that time as a YS. You'll YS SC start times between x and y hours. No. They can't give you whatever you want if you YS and they can't give you anything.