Many of us happen to know lawyers. Like anything in life, some are better than others. I am an aquaintence of one of our ILWU attorneys and neighbor to a federal judge and two of our children are best friends. Since I started paying attention to your mess, my neighbor called the 9th's ruling, along with the motion to reconsider, en banc petition, the rule 60b joke and the motion to transfer. The Ferderal rules provide comments to the rules to aid judges in decisions and he was pretty emphatic about how it would turn out when I gave him some of the details. Granted he is a democrat and has a more liberal orientation but he was dead on. Of course, he would be the first to admit he has been wrong and had decisions overturned but in these instances I was impressed on how closely he called things. I have had less interaction with our union attorney but he shared similar thoughts.
Both of them share your union's opinion that the dicta included in the 9th's decision was meant to inform the parties of what view the court would take with a refiling of the case or a similar case were it to return to them. I am not saying he is going to be right but he certainly has called much of what occurred dead on. I am no lawyer and have never claimed to be like some on here and only relay what I consider to be valid legal opinion. The only opinions I have offered that are my own are on the nature of unions and seniority. I think you all are going to find that the Declaratory Judgement complaint filed by your company will not make it to trial because the 9th has already made clear, the union is free to bargain and there is no way a court can grant some blanket immunity for an unknown complaint without running afoul of the ripeness doctrine.
What you will probably see when the dismissals begin is dicta in those judgements that reiterate much of the 9th's opinion as well as education that any agreement may be modified, your transition agreement is a placeholder agreement until a completed single contract replaces it. The terms and conditions to complete it are between the company and the Collective Bargaining Agent and that your company owes no Duty of Fair Representation, and in large part is indemnified by the Union being the responsible party. Your own company has been emphatic the seniority is the unions deal and as long as it meets the conditions of the company to not create significant training costs, it meets the conditions of your Transition Agreement and they could care less the makeup.
