To be clear what the UAL committee is disputing you need to read the memorandum posted on the website. Here is a relevant excerpt:
Before setting out the facts concerning the relationship between Continental and its
numerous regional partners as they relate to the portions of the CAL seniority list that are in
dispute and the “law” on this issue, we want to make clear what is and is not in dispute in this
case. First, the UAL Committee is
not asking the Board to change any pilot’s pre-merger
ordering on the CAL list, to diminish any pilot’s relative seniority or bidding power vis-a-vis any other CAL pilot on the CAL list, or to alter any CAL pilot’s standing on the ISL relative to other
CAL pilots in their own pre-merger group. In other words, nothing in the UAL Committee’s view
of longevity will affect the pre-merger position of any pilot of either company relative to his or
her pre-merger colleagues.
Second, the CAL pilots whose longevity is at issue comprise less than a quarter of the
CAL list. The UAL Committee does not dispute: i) the dates of hire and related longevity of
pilots on the CAL list who were integrated in the four arbitration proceedings ending with the
1991 Ross Award and other pilots in the list with seniority numbers ranging from 1-1641 on the
CAL Certified Seniority List, Jt. Ex. E.1; ii) the dates of hire of off-the-street CAL hires from the 1988 – 2003 period (including the Eastern Airlines hires in 1997); or iii) the dates of hire and related longevity of any of CAL’s post-2004 hires (in the range from 3294-4807).
The list to be presented today will include longevity as a factor. So by necessity they have to establish how they arrived at the longevity numbers.