I believe what Mr. Nitty refers to is that back in 2002, Atlas approached a couple of operators here and asked them to crew and operate the aircraft to reduce the U.S. pilots. When they found no one to help with the scheme, they moved aircraft to the Polar subsidiary and hired a number of Tower crews for those aircraft.
It appears based on public documents, that their union knew all along that the aircraft in qustion were dry leased and could be returned at any time, minus crews and that those jobs would not be part of the merged carrier. They apparently never conveyed to the individuals that they would not have job rights with the merged carrier.