It's frustrating to read about another "closed shop" airline's pilots stamping their feet and throwing tantrums when confronted by the pressures of a global market. The one constant in any business is change and the only way to deal with it is to adapt.
You describe your benefits as "Hard Won", which implies that the management wasn't happy to give them up because doing so meant foregoing profit. You won the benefits because the prevaling market conditions meant you were too valuable to risk losing. Now the market has changed, the management is taking back what it gave and for the time being your jobs are too valuable to you and under too much competitive pressure for you to do much about it. It's just business.
In times gone by such things as terms and conditions were better protected by legislative frameworks. Those times ended for most industries a long time ago; the amount of time and money it takes to train pilots shielded you for a while but now you're faced with cheaper competition from guys who are just more hungry than you. Understand this though; while your management might not be faced with competition from cheap MBAs streaming out of the Baltics (they will be, don't doubt that) they are in competition with the locos and anything they can do to lower the cost base isn't about profit any more, it's about survival. They could go on honouring the terms and conditions you fought so hard for right up to the point when the company folds and everyone is out of a job.
The good news is that business is cyclical. There might really be a pilot shortage again one day, in which case you will all fight hard (even the cheap guys threatening your jobs now) and win things back. And because it would take a global pilot shortage to make this happen your managers would pass the cost on to pax without fear of the competition. That's one possibility, and if it happens you can bet they will squeal like pigs about it.
In the meantime by all means keep fighting for your benefits, it would be wrong to give them up too easily, but bear in mind that it was a different business when you won them.
Let the flaming begin
