Captain Demery,
No one seeing the volume of your reasoning could doubt your sincerity. I for one have frequently agreed that the fourty niners situation is an utter disgrace.
But sir, it is just as big a disgrace to use the career opertunites of less fortunate Pilots than yourself as to grist to the mill of industrial action.
In 1989 the AFAP went on a campain for which it had just as much self justification. It similarly asked other pilots to forgo their career aspirations in support of the AFAP campain.
The result was that within six months, TWO ENTIRE AIRLINES had been restaffed and were operating at full capacity, and the careers of many AFAP members were in taters.
Those that joined Ansett and Australian Airlines at the time certainly knew the emnity that was leveled against them. But the chance of an airline carreer is irresistable to many young, underpaid pilots working for marginal operators.
I hear that, while many have refused offers from Cathay, the company has still filled every position on it's intake courses. Hardly suprising considering the current world situation.
Your ban therefore has the effect of dissadvantaging those that support you, whilst leaving a vacancy for those that are willing to defy you.
The fact that these people will not be allowed to join the HFOA will mean they will become an autonymous group upon which the company knows it can rely.
What happens next time you wish to instigate industrial action when, through your own actions, a large number of Cathay pilots are not in your union and resent the treatment they have been handed by you?
I honestly believe you are sowing the seeds of the destruction of your organisation. Your only weapon is unity and you are destroying that by making an unreasnoble demand on young aspirants, then excluding a group of fellow pilots from your organisation.
The need to help the "49ers" is paramount. Your current course won't.