Command priority date was justified.
What wasn't justified was a group of pilots negotiating their place on a seniority list that wasn't theirs!!! Or if you don't want to look at it that way, it wasn't justified that the wide body EBA alone (and hence the wide body pilots) were able to negotiate how the lists would be joined. The short haul pilots had zero input into the wide body negotiations that secured a massive win for the CRZFO's.
Under the deal that they had originally signed up to, prior to that new EBA coming in, they (CRZFO's) were always going to have to basically quit V and start at the bottom of the domestic seniority list when moving to the right seat. What they got at least is priority on wide body right seats in the future.
There were a lot of guys who decided to not apply for the CRZFO gig because the T&C's were so ****. Joined the short haul under the knowledge that any CRZFO's coming from the wide body would start at the bottom below them, only to have that EBA come in and the goal posts change.
In reality the company is to blame for the most part, and to a lesser degree the unions. Company should never have set it up a separate entity only to join it later
. And the unions should not have allowed that to be put into the wide body EBA without at least a survey to the short haul guys as they were also going to be directly impacted by it too!
Always two sides to the story.