jfd
Bristow has been a non-union company (well, on the engineering side anyway), for so long that I think most people when it came to the crunch and accepted that union representation was necessary, voted for the least militant of the two. The fact that the two unions 'vetted' by the management were ultimately to amalgamate was generally ignored by most voters.
As for the original posting, surely any partnership set up to negotiate terms and conditions has to be 'close' to make it work and of course the 'management' will downgrade their offers before they present them to the union convenors.
Look at it this way. If you go into a market to buy something, you haggle, you try get the 'goods' for the lowest price you can, not for what you can afford. The seller, on the other hand, tries to jack the price as high as it will go. Eventually, you and the seller negotiate a price and agree.
Or am I missing something here?
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If it aint broke.........
PS - I can guess who The Snake is, but who is The Man.
TM