globalflair

I'll b damn!!!! If you can't put in a flipping bid mabey just mabey you should find another line of work!

Jetjok

If you spell that poorly, maybe you should too.

Kipper

Gosh. Tough crowd here as always. I never said I wouldn't be able to bid in that timeframe - all I meant is I'm disappointed they are giving us less time - I don't know why that was changed. I don't think it should have had anything to do with another window for vto choices. We used to have separate windows a long time ago. I'm glad the separate window came back as I do bid vto often - I just don't like having less time overall.

busdriver12

Yeah, it is a tough crowd. It would have been better if they could publish the bid packs earlier and open the bids a few days earlier, but since they barely seem to be able to get them out on time as it is, doubt that was a viable option. I can't really think of another way to accomplish it, besides closing the SWW out later, and it's really late already.

Adlerdriver

It was changed because we (collectively) wanted the CIC inputs to be resolved before our VTO inputs, so we weren't asking for trips that were already gone. Surely you can understand that logic.

The change to the VTO process affects the overall bid schedule because there are a finite amount of days in the bid month after the bid packs are published. We either shorten number of days available for bidding or we move the awarding of monthly schedules later in the month.

What we had more than a contract back in history is sort of irrelevant. We were working with the system as it was under out current (last) contract. A long time ago, everyone bid on paper and trips trades were done with the schedulers in person.

Under our current system bids opened and the bidpack is published 24 days prior to the start of the bid month. That has been the schedule since at least the 2006 CBA. It would seem that moving this publication date to a point earlier in the month might be logistically difficult due to the constraints of pairing and line construction required to publish the bidpacks.

So, if the bid opening date is the "anchor" to the timeline, allowing us all more time to bid is only going to delay the bid awards.

I think most of us would rather have a little less time to submit our bid rather than get our schedule later in the month.