Road & Commuter, Do you want Straight Seniority or Wave / Round Robin process
0%Press here for Straight Seniority
0%Press here for Wave / Round Robin
We use the wave system on the Eastern1 Road district. The evaluation process runs down the first splits to the end, then goes down the 2nd splits and so on until all 5 splits are run in seniority order. That means we go down Split 1 in senority order and award based off your choice in order of preference seniority permitting. Once you are awarded your choice, it's on to the next person in Split 1 until we reach the bottom person. Then, we start the same process for EACH subsequent Split.
If you asked for 1 week on 3 separate splits, latest in the year. That means it went 3 waves of assigning the full roster on each split before all of your requests were completed.
The CFT uses the strict seniority system. We go down the list in seniority order awarding all splits based on seniority before moving on to the next employee. That means you can make choices in each split for where you want specific week(s) to be. You don't have to just go latest in the year as possible. However, I would always back up my choices in each split with a latest in the year.
Ultimately, it is a Seniority based system no matter which process we use. We can not manufacture allocations for everyone to be off in July or December. We have to work within the limitations set by the Carrier for the amount of people to be off that week (allocations). The number of weeks due overall for a list is what sets the number of allocations per week. The Carrier sets the allocations, and we negotiate every year to manipulate them to maximize the weeks during breaks and holidays. NOT EVERYONE IS GOING TO GET WHAT THEY WANT.
The reason there are up to 5 splits is that it represents the maximum number of weeks you can earn by agreement (5 weeks). If you put in a choice on split 1 for 1 week, you are only speaking to 1 week. If you put something in on a separate split, you are splitting up your vacation.
Anyone can make a motion on the floor at the meeting to go away from the Round Robin/Wave process we use and go to a Strict Seniority system.
Using the Wave/Round Robin gives the younger seniority members a better chance at a vacation later in the year because they could slip in one week of vacation into a one week slot since older seniority members using this process most likely will bid a block of several weeks.
@Steven Humphrey said,"Why are you explaining this after 60% of the road didn't get what they wanted,but I guarantee that the Metra guys got what they wanted,when we needed help with putting in the vacations all you union guys as usual would say go to the web site."