Employment seniority: Cases from Iago to Weber

Expectations based on length of service concerning promotion and other conditions of employment antedate institutionalized collective bargaining. With the growth of unionization, formal seniority rules came increasingly to be incorporated in collective agreements to provide fair and objective criteria for regulation of layoffs, recall from layoff, and promotion on the basis of waiting one’s turn in a line of succession. The remedy sought by plaintiffs in discrimination cases is court-ordered assignment to their rightful place on the appropriate seniority roster. Plaintiffs in “reverse discrimination” cases seek ouster of former discriminatees who were placed ahead of them under affirmative action. This inquiry is supported in part by a grant from the American Philosophical Society and by the sabbatical budget of the University of Rhode Island