UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
October 29, 2008 - Preliminary Injunction Hearing
Page 58-59
MR. SEHAM
Their brief provides that plaintiffs allege hostile discrimination without challenging either the merits of USAPA seniority policies or whether USAPA can properly revisit seniority. Plaintiffs allege that, instead, USAPA improperly visited the seniority issue. And they go on to say it's because we didn't take the, quote, unquote, minority interest into account.
THE COURT: The union was created and selected by express campaign promises to disregard the interests of the West Pilots.
MR. SEHAM: That is not correct. That is not correct. And in fact, I would submit, Your Honor, in terms of
dispositive evidence, which you have to look at is our constitution. Because other than that, other than the constitution and our negotiating position, there is no document that competently addresses what our position is. And our constitution creates for ourselves a contractual obligation to proceed with a date of hire seniority list objection but to protect through conditions and restrictions the un-merged career expectations of the West Pilots. The proposal that you evaluated, Your Honor, if the Court stops at --
THE COURT: I just read your summary in Paragraph A that says it's a date-of-hire list. And I have not had time to study the detail.
MR. SEHAM: And we could present an hour and a half of testimony, because that's how long it took us to present to the company. Everything else in that proposal, everything else constitutes 10 years of conditions and restrictions which effectively bars the operation of the seniority list rights, bars the East Pilots from bidding into the west system so that all the pilots based in Las Vegas, all the pilots based in Phoenix, have 10 years of protection in terms of protecting what their expectations were with respect to continually filling the positions in their airline, in the America West operation.
THE COURT: Having bidding rights isn't much comfort if you are laid off.
MR. SEHAM: That's true. If there is a situation, and that's why, perhaps, it's consistent with our position under TA9, that if there is a substantial reduction in the pilot body, that that's going to go by date of hire. However, in terms of bidding date today, it's the conditions and restrictions, pages of it, are all created for the protection of the West Pilots. If you look at every other major employee group on this property, the dispatchers, the flight attendants, the mechanics, the stock employees, they are all going through a pure date of hire.
THE COURT: That's irrelevant. I mean, things are different from pilots than other groups.
MR. SEHAM: I don't think it's that different from the flight attendants in terms of bidding and vacation and routes and wide body versus --
THE COURT: Seniority, though. Isn't there more turnover in those positions than there is --