All the CAL guys have been very helpful to me.

Here is some info on monthly bidding and displacements on the UAL side since were are going to start using that.
For monthly bidding, the company publishes openings each month, if they are available. There is no seniority contingency, where you can bid only if it puts you at a certain seniority percentage. You make your choice, and take your chances.
If the bids open up other fleets/seats, we call these "back-filled". That means pilots get bids that weren't published, but were caused by pilots leaving their seats to take the published seat bid. Unfilled bids means nobody bid it, and it goes to new hires.

Displacements work a little different. When the company sees too many pilots in a fleet/seat, they can publish a displacement bid. It says something to the effect that 10 400 F/O's will be bumped out of SFO. It should go to jr pilots first, but sr pilots can volunteer. You can bid anywhere there is a pilot jr to you. The results are then published. Big bumps will result in further displacement bids if too many pilots bump to the same fleet/seat. A big bump can go on for many months, until manpower has what they think they need.

Post SLI we will all start using this system. There will be no "flush" bid. But if UAL has been sitting too fat on 756 pilots, there might be a big bump off this aircraft.