I'm not entirely sure what you mean by backfills. If you mean trickle down bids, they are included in with the final award. Anything above and beyond the advertised vacancies are usually attributed to trickle downs.

So, to answer your question, they are not awarded separately, but include in the final award.

If you mean any unfilled vacancies given to new hires, then, yes that is a separate process, but in this case, there were no unfilled vacancies, so nothing from this bid will get to new hires. The Guppy FO in both SFO and LAX got close though, junior new hires moving west....

I got to fly with 2 different new hires last week. I haven't done that in 14 years....