What's been learnt from the industrial dispute in 1989? Not much really. That's the great travesty of every one's pain.
There's no cohesion, there's no strong voice and there's still "dog eat dog" out there.
I'm here perched in the UK on not a bad job however I am well aware it can all go pear shaped in no time at all. Is there are union in this company? Probably not since there's many different nationalities working here. So many are not aware of just how vulnerable they are industrially.
Am I a member of a union(s)? You bet I am.
Is this union effective? Hard to say. If you belong the the Big Airline (UK) then I think you're laughing, if not then you know what the 2 letters in the union's name really represent.
Fortunately there's a lot of worker info out there in the WWW but you have to be the one proactive enough to care to look for it. Will they (the union, non Oz) act on it? Who knows? What is very apparent is that the union representation is as only as good as the pilot council representing it. Funnily enough, in the UK airlines there's been a higher than normal percentage of Aussies on various CC.
So in a round about way, perhaps the lessons of 1989 have been absorbed and adapted to a new environment with new accents. I certainly hope so.