I disagree with his contention that min/max is never used to shrink a category.

But my understanding of his explanation is that actual staffing is a summation of many people finishing training, leaving for other fleets, coming off sick leave etc and that at the level of a SINGLE bid ... they can pull down the min but not actually see a reduction in head count because they are backfilling with people who bid in two months ago and can replace the lost crewmembers in a subsequent bid before the number of pilots bidding shrinks month to month

Now if they do it multiple bids in a row .... yes the category shrinks.