Sorry Raven and Panza,
There is no angry tone here just a sad resignation as to how things will be. Whatever happened in the past is irrelevant, most guys joining now or who joined in the past 6-8 years were late 20's early 30's, had 4-6000 hrs and joined because command was happily around 10 yrs. (Not the green 21 year olds with 1000 hrs)
It is not going to be this 10 years, not by any stretch of the imagination and your subtle use of 10+ as your time to command doesn't remotely equal the 18 years many will be facing. If you were 10+ meaning you did 15 or 16 years to command then I apologise. However I am guessing it was more like 10 to 11.
I agree that the company needs captains more than F/O's or S/O's and so I agree that you carry considerably more weight in negotiations.
Post '99ers haven't forgotten negotiations in '99 when the Company didn't want to add ASL seniority straight in and instantly stretch command for new joiner S/Os by 3-4 years. While the AOA GC stated that new joiners S/Os were insignificant next to non union members in ASL and anyone post '99 should wait as long for command as the AOA deemed necessary.
Once again history from '99 seems to be repeating itself with the DPA rejecting the move to join the bottom of Cathay's seniority scale and the spectre that once again the AOA GC will slide in a bunch of non-union non-cathay people (nice blokes and good friends of theirs, mind you) and commands will stretch out a further 3-5 years. (hey it only affects post '99 joiners waiting on command so it doesn't affect anybody)
On top of RA65 which I don't have a problem with. My point is, while yes sticking together is a good thing, anyone who joined post '99 has had a union who constantly puts anyone else before us. If every post '99 union member quit and formed a pilot body that didn't put us second every time everyone would be a lot better off.
You could negotiate with what leverage you had which as captains would be plenty, and we could scrape together 1500 members, (everyone post '99 would join since they would see they are actually represented) and see how we go with reasonable numbers but with only f/o's and s/o's amongst us for the next 3-4 years (gambling maybe a few get Commands before RA 65).
The AOA would never see another new member of course but as has often been pointed out to me, new joiner AOA members are basically worthless anyway.
Hey it couldn't get much worse
the 18 years isn't factoring in the the odd slowdown in the industry which could push out command times for post '99 guys to 20 or 25 years.
We'd have to go to 65 for command because we'd still be F/Oing at 55
Of course we could all just stick together instead.