A good assessment as evidenced by today's SCMP.
A Cathay Pacific pilots' union leader said yesterday members may be forced to consider a return to industrial action after the company refused to meet them.
The general secretary of the Aircrew Officers' Association, John Findlay, accused the company of bad faith for refusing to talk unless the union made further concessions.
The union had suspended a work-to-rule campaign and a demand that sacked pilots be re-instated, in an effort to get Cathay to return to negotiations over pay and rostering.
Cathay previously had nominated the measures as "steps in the right direction", but after one meeting also demanded an end to "blacklisting" of new recruits.
Mr Findlay said the union wrote to Cathay this week refusing to lift the recruitment ban. He said the union was still waiting for a formal response from Cathay, although the company's public relations staff had indicated in the media that they would not negotiate while the ban remained.
Mr Findlay said the demand for the ban to be lifted came as a surprise after their initial meeting with Cathay ended with talk of plans to meet again.
"It seems every time we meet one of their requirements, they set another one . . . We have shown our good faith. We have shown our sincerity but we don't see any coming back," he said. "Clearly going back to industrial action is an option. But we would rather get back to the table."
Any decision to reinstate the work-to-rule campaign probably would not be made without a vote of members at an extraordinary general meeting.
Mr Findlay said the recruitment ban was a response to the sacking of 53 pilots in July and statements by the company that new staff would be hired to replace them. Under the terms of the ban, new recruits are barred from the union for life.
A spokeswoman for Cathay, Lisa Wong Lai-shan, said the company needed its staff to work together in the current downturn.
The company yesterday released passenger figures for October, with traffic volumes down 18 per cent compared with the same time last year. She said the pilots had not convinced the company they had the level of commitment needed to negotiate.
"It's up to them to convince us they have the sincerity. They have not done so yet . . . That's why there's no meeting scheduled," she said. "The AOA leaders have to consider the real situation and if they are sincere about holding talks we hope they will make a sensible decision."
Dropping the recruitment ban would be a "step in the right direction" to re-starting talks, Ms Wong said.
Asked if she could guarantee the company would make no further preconditions to talks if the union took that step, she said it was up to the union to demonstrate its sincerity.
Ms Wong said the company would not meet the pilots without their union taking further steps, such as dropping the ban.
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Surely dropping the ban would not be the end of the world, and show the Cx folks that they were serious. If they then balked at talks any bans and work to rules could just as easily be reinstated