Am I alone in failing to see the connection between pilots striking to improve their conditions and making life harder for up and coming fATPLs? The aircraft will always need pilots. By preventing companies working us all to 900 hours without fail we increase the number of jobs available. By improving pay we improve the ability of the fATPLs to pay off their huge training debts. By resisting outsourcing of work to foreign carriers we increase the number of jobs based in the UK. These all sound like good things to me.
1) Company revenue stream is lost, lowering ability to pay any expenses including salaries, resulting in cutback to expansion plans and/or offshoring of jobs to non-union bases.
2) Salary base is higher for no increase in productivity (assuming you are at 900 hrs already), resulting in lower available cash for more salaries.
3) Reduction in working hours reduces productivity for company resulting in higher cost of their capital, resulting in diminished ability to expand to allow recruitment.
So although an operation not using 900 hours for all staff results in a requirement for more pilots to fly the existing fleet, it lowers the ability to expand beyond that existing fleet and provokes offshoring that you claim not to want.
Though it would be incorrect to suggest that 900 hours was designed either as a limit or is appropriate for the LH operations we now see, it is there and it would be naive to see it not used by whomever can use it. What would be more productive would be to promote the use of more scientific maxima that are not a hard limit that merges LH and SH requirements.
Cash is not on tap from a company.