Every time I get homesick and think about coming back I read about this crap...'Hun would you mind if we just stayed here till retirement?'
You guys are in the midst of the industrial game now hold the line and F*%$ what Joe Public or the commercial press thinks (don't sweat the analogous '89 Pliot's strike cause Civil Air just isn't that reckless).
History Lesson
When I finished college and started work on a Bass Strait oil rig in 1989 I was making nearly $20K a year more than my father as a Arrivals (Area) controller after he worked every O/T he could get (I was working 4 weeks on 4 weeks off plus 4 weeks annual leave).