At the airlines, furloughs take place in reverse senority order ! The whole 'senority list' thing is unlike what you find at most corporations. When you have a senority-list based system, the junior people are furloughed first. The company does not get to pick and choose who gets furloughed and who doesn't. The company comes up with a number of people to furlough, and those 'layoffs' come from the bottom of the list up.
To protect against 'seasonal employment', where the company boom-hires during the peak months, and then furloughs during the slow months, most contracts have furlough pay protections in them. So, just an example,if you're going to get furloughed, you get 3 months pay.
I'm not saying having people take a few months off with no pay is a bad thing, it isn't. But it must work with the senority system in place at all airlines!