ccguy,
127 excess crew is not a lot spread over 3 bases. The natural attrition alone would take care of this number in less than 6 months. Add to that the number of people who will move across to V and we will be back at optimal crew compliments within 3 months.
Consider how long the part-time lists are in the various bases. Several hundred long, here is an opportunity for many of those crew to get their wish and go part-time right away, at least for a month or two. I myself am seriously seeing it as a great opportunity to take a little more time off this year than just my annual leave will allow.
The sticking point with the agreement I believe isn't that it's a recession and we all need to pitch in. It's the feeling that we will never have the opportunity to negotiate good conditions with the company again. If they came to us and said "lets put together a short term agreement to save your jobs and the company over 2 years" then they'd get a different response I'm sure. But they are not saying that, they are saying "times are bad now, we can't afford this and we want to lock in much lower rates forever". But the company will experience high profitability again and crew quite rightly don't want to be left holding onto cheap conditions while the company rakes in extra profits in the good times.