Always a can of worms. If you followed the saga of Redtail and his colleuges, you will see it is such a long and drawn out process. They eventually managed to get a good chunk of what they wanted (and rightly deserved) but with the dawning of less labour intensive/more reliable aircraft, JAR66 A licence engineers and more lenient MEL's, any industrial action in order to score a pay rise is going to hurt big time before it starts to hurt the airlines.
The last big one I can remember was BA back in the late 80's early 90's and they were out for 2 weeks with not that many cancelled services (correct me if i'm wrong).
I am well published in the fact that we should all join the engineers equivelent to BALPA and at the moment the ALAE seems the only real option. A lot say it has no teeth but the more people join the better it will be able to fight our cause. Looking at AirMechs salary survey £35k a year is a top end wage, it should be the norm for an LAME. I can't believe how companies are getting away with paying £18k for a rotary A&C.
If we had ledgislation from the CAA that required a proper minimum level of LAME support for a number of aircraft then the poor sods that end up running 2 C checks on there own in the same hangar wouldn't be put in those positions. This would force up wages, allow good quality engineers to progress and earn what they are worth, not what the airlines think they can get away with paying them.
I'm not going to hold my breath though we always moan but nothing ever happens. But there is always a first time!