Historically, the IAM’s seniority integration policy has been to integrate by the current date of hire into the specified classification (dovetailing). However,
IAM tried screwing the AMFA-represented Trump Shuttle mechanics when USAir purchased the Trump Shuttle. The affected mechanics had to undergo a lengthy court battle to get their rightful seniority, but they prevailed in the end.
http://ftp.resource.org/courts.gov/c/F3/378/378.F3d.269.03-7798.html
The integration, or "mainlining," process required USAir and IAM to come to an agreement as to how plaintiffs' seniority status would be calculated with respect to their peers in the mainline workforce. IAM has a longstanding policy of "dovetailing" seniority lists, which involves blending the two employee groups based on their pre-merger employment dates at each of the merging airlines. In applying this policy to plaintiffs, IAM had to decide what it would consider to be plaintiffs' start dates at Shuttle. Plaintiffs felt that IAM should apply their Eastern start dates because they viewed their move from Eastern to Trump Shuttle as a "transfer." IAM, however, argued that plaintiffs resigned from Eastern prior to accepting employment at Trump Shuttle and, therefore, they should only be accorded seniority classification from their start-dates at Trump Shuttle.
In this case, there was ample evidence, when viewed in the aggregate, to support the verdict. IAM claimed at trial that its motivation for stripping plaintiffs of their Eastern seniority was their having resigned from Eastern. This claim was belied by the position it had taken during the Eastern bankruptcy proceeding that plaintiffs were to be considered as merely having transitioned from Eastern to Trump. Once plaintiffs showed that IAM's purported neutral motivation was pretextual, they only needed to convince the jury that the single other motivation suggested by either party — animus as a result of plaintiffs' association with AMFA — was the reason for IAM's adverse decision.
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Plaintiffs met this burden by producing various pieces of evidence pointing to this rationale. For instance, at least one plaintiff testified to personal knowledge of the acrimony between IAM and AMFA. Further, at least one IAM official testified as to the hostility between the groups. In addition, with respect to plaintiffs themselves, the minutes of an IAM local lodge stated that plaintiffs "voted for AMFA. IAM will now go for their jobs." Similarly, various IAM union members petitioned IAM officials not to accord plaintiffs their Eastern seniority because they voted in favor of AMFA. Viewing this evidence in the aggregate and in light of Seham's corroborating testimony that IAM officials were themselves hostile towards those associated with AMFA, the jury reasonably could have believed that IAM was swayed by the sentiments expressed by its members and officials.