Originally Posted by
nene
The whole bank thing is a leftover feature of the contract that we used to be capped on how much credit you could get paid in a month overall. If you "worked too much" one month, the credit would automatically go into your bank where you had to work less to pull it back out. It was a leveling mechanism imposed by the union to help pilots help themselves.
Much of the orgins of the PWA is designed to help pilots from ruining QOL for themselves. Not working on vacations, limiting straight open time pickups, etc. These are all features that have been put in to help pilots control themselves.
Im sure the company would love to eradicate all of these features and let us hoor ourselves out as much as possible, reduces headcount, leaves the "slackers" behind. Be careful of the world you create for yourself. Previous generations weren't idiots, they just had insight into human nature and trying to create a sustainable QOL along with good pay.
The history lesson is good, but in today's PWA world the bank has shifted. People mainly use it to either buy vacation days or use up to 5 hours in order to hit the GS trigger. Given the increase in the value of a vacation day it makes sense to bump up the max bank limit to compensate. 80 is also a high hurdle for most people to clear regularly in order to stock up their bank or pay back a negative balance. It should be a more reasonable fixed number (like 70), or indexed to something lower like ALV or ALV-X. I'm also not sure why there needs to be a cap of 20 for adding to the bank. I guess the company wants people working more over more bid periods in order to fill up, as opposed to say someone cashing in a ton of PB days for pay and credit maxing out the bank in a single bid period.