Remoak, you make comments about the Ansett NZ dispute but were not involved yourself apparently. If the pilots had not had 2 single day strikes, then perhaps they would not have been (illegally as it turns out) locked out. No lock-out then no loss of jobs is a stretch. You do know the company went on for nearly 2 years after the dispute? Also, I seriously doubt it all went as "carefully planned" by the company. The lockout produced a $20 000 effective pay cut for Captains and a similar amount proportionally for F/Os. The company still went bust. The strikes occurred because management refused to negotiate....just offered a pay cut and expected it to be taken.
I am proud of my colleagues who refused to lie down. We have all moved on. Most are now better off, but many of us devoted a large part of our lives to try and make Ansett NZ a success...that's why we don't easily let it go. All of the non-flying managers combined had less time with the company that I did at the time of the dispute. And there were many pilots who had been there longer than me. One of the managers involved said to someone "don't take it personally". That was the difference between us and them, and what made Ansett NZ such a great place to work up until "they" arrived. We did take it personally, and that was why the airline had such a great customer service reputation, and why Air NZ finally built airbridges and introduced food and drink on domestic flights, and generally dragged themselves out of the stone age.
There are certainly many lessons to be learned from our experience, and for sure there were a lot of mistakes made, but that doesn't mean that managers are always right and industrial action is always wrong. Sometimes it is all that is left to employees when they are afflicted by poor management tactics. Like I said earlier, a good managaer would never let things reach this stage.......look at what poor management cost Mt Cook during their recent dispute.