So many sides to this coin. Raise the target hours and anyone can certify. But don't raise them and I wouldn't want to burn time on a dead day low level fac. I even understand Management's argument "someone has to sit on position even when it's dead and go from zero to 80 in 2.5 seconds". I see our side as well, level 5 tower, two staffed positions. 5 devs on local and 1 ground with min staffing at 3, hard to get 5 devs on the same shift 4 hours each and there will be overlap as sat/sun are just dead days to even train on.
We have 3 devs now and have been able to up our numbers from 8 hours a week per Dev to 18-20 on average. However, we are also lucky that a decade ago, the FacRep at the time and local area fought to get local 450 hours so you can sit, as at the time, dead, 15 minutes of chaos, than dead again. If the dev wasn't in the cab, they missed all the wroth while training, so now we sit them on and rot.
NATCA IMO is on board as people said, ncept. Allow movement, seems like a fair deal to keep ncept and people moving. Hard to justify moves if no one is getting adequate times on position.
There will always be people who want to move for whatever reason. However, the FAA could have easily done a better job at starting people where they want. Sure not everyone can work at DFW, however, when you have a guy, we can call him me, state they want to stay on the west coast, specifically San Diego, and be offered 3 in Florida and nothing west coast, goes to first fac and starts with a controller who asked for Ohio, and had San Diego on their list... Thus an option, is insane. Do I want to be at a 12? Yes. If I got San Diego, would I have tried to leave? Eff no. Sure, not everyone can start at SAN either. Also get that. But it was a need and an option and I asked for it, but wasn't offered it.