Posting Vacant Route
Just had an informal A about management not posting a vacated route in a timely manner (took about 6 weeks for them to post a route after a carrier retirement). They refused to settle locally for dubious reasons, because there's always some excuse for why they can't do their jobs. It's been kicked up to formal A.
The contract says it must be posted within 14 days, so we were seeking damages of an out of schedule premium for the eventual bid winner for every work day between when it should have been posted and when it actually was (18 work days in total). This seems to be the accepted remedy for the situation from everywhere else I've read.
However, the formal A union rep called to talk about it and told me that because they have 14 days to post, 10 days of bidding, 10 days to announce, and 15 days to put them on the route after winning, that they'll only be out of compliance for the days they are late on getting the winner onto the actual route.
In other words, if they rush through the bid process, announcement process, and the start date process, they'd only be on the hook for the days in excess of those 35 combined days. The posting did finally go up and it's only going to be up for 5 days (which is actually how long they usually are in our office), and if they rush the rest of the process, they may only be 3-4 work days beyond the 35 combined days.
This all seems pretty bogus to me. The contract says what it says... 14 days to post. Period. If they want to try to move faster on the other parts of the process, so be it, but it doesn't absolve the initial tardiness, because this expediting was still also an option on the original required timeline that they missed.
Is the branch trying to settle too low here? Seems like he's trying to make management's argument for them rather than going after the maximum remedy.