Whilst I agree with your sentiment Sqwak7700, may I point out the following, which might actually work in the favour of seniority.
- As you correctly point out, we would lose our freighter DECs (ASL 2009, Oasis, KA, etc), however, isn't it the freighter where we are hurting the most for excess crew? In fact, it has been suggested that the voluntary unpaid leave was actually aimed mostly at the freighter, and to a much smaller extent the 777. If you talk to the other fleets, especially the Airbus, most guys are working so hard, that they don't want their mates taking unpaid leave, because it will overload the rest of the guys.
- Furloughing DEFOs on the passenger fleet could well happen also, because as you say, it is easier to let go of a based guy rather than a HK pilot. Remember that all the DEFOs are based. On the issue of training, they've already committed to convert the Nth American crews to 777, so letting go of based DEFOs in seniority will not impact the operation. The same goes for Aust, where everyone on the passenger fleet is Airbus, so training issues don't come into it.
Europe might be a little bit messier, because there are different fleets to Europe, and a mix of freighter guys, and COS 08 unified scale (aka C-scale) to muddy the waters. however, it should not be insurmountable.