Re-Heat, it's interesting that you talk about our lack of empathy with other workers. I'm sure for most of us the real world experience is quite the opposite - most other workers we meet, in fact most people in general, have a totally blinkered view of what we do, largely based on hearsay and films. No amount of good
PR will change that. It's we who need to be on the receiving end of some positive empathy!
I would also hazard a guess that a large number of us have experience of doing other jobs at one time or another, while few other workers have experience of being a professional pilot. So this lack of empathy you accuse us of hardly seems to hold water as a factual proposition.
But anyway, that is all just a distraction from your main argument, which would appear to be that the management do everything for the good of an efficient, profitable company, and the pilots do everything they can to stop them because they are prone to laziness and out of touch with 'real' work.
Perhaps too simplistic for you? Well that's how it's coming across. Aren't management human as well? Do they never have their own little hidden agendas which might not always be for the total good? Do they never try to push the boundaries? See how much productivity they can squeeze out of people? Or maybe they'll be in a perfect Adam Smith type capitalist utopia once they get rid of those pesky pilots.
The only people who care about the pilots' terms and conditions are the pilots. How could you not expect them to fight their corner? Would management do anything different?