The unions have been completely out managed by these experienced commercially minded hatchet men.
At the risk of being very unpopular can I point out that we won't know that with any certainty until the annual report for 2009/2010 is published in 12 months time.
There are three possible scenarios:
First the retained profit from 2008/2009 plus income from this new financial year is insufficient for NATS to pay its bills and fund its revised investment programme. That won't be good for many of us but in that case the union probably got us a better deal than we had any right to expect.
Second the retained profit plus income is pretty close to the money needed to pay the bills and fund the revised investment programme. In that case the deal was just about right.
Third the retained profit plus income is more than enough to pay the bills and fund the revised investment programme and NATS reports another big profit in June 2010. In that case the deal was lousy and we've all been screwed.
I don't see how anybody can say which is most likely at the moment.