What if you are the bottom man, it's your turn to bid, and this is the only job available?
If you refuse to bid, they would assign you to it. Does this mean you'd get the travel pay?
Just curious....
Our bid language is different from yours.
Here, once you bid a route its yours forever. Routes only come available for bid when the employee retires, transfers into feeder, bids something else, voluntarily surrenders it, or when volume growth creates a new route (defined as a route that is in for an average of 3 days per week in a 30 day period, excluding peak).
The bottom 30-40% of our driver workforce in terms of seniority are "unassigned". They do not have bid routes of their own. They cover vacations, sick calls, disability etc. We also have a few relatively high seniority drivers who are unassigned by choice; their seniority allows them to pick and choose which available routes they will run on a daily basis.
We do not have "casuals" here. All of our drivers achieve full seniority with full wages once they make it through their 30 day probationary period and subsequent progression.
If you are an unassigned driver and you are instructed to run one of the satellite routes, the company is obliged to pay you from your normal start time and either provide a package car for you to drive out to the satellite center from the home center, or else mileage pay for the difference between your normal commute and your commute to the satellite location. Some drivers choose the latter so that they can get home earlier. Its up to them. Nobody can be "forced" to commute to a satellite center.