Everyone, I believe, understands where crew are coming from.
The difficulty I have grasping, and probably many, many others is that this alignment of contract is long, long overdue. The current working practices and pay of the CC do not fit into the modern age. The days of halcyon, rich air travel are over and the company needs to re-address that. Oddly enough most other departments have taken their re-adjustment and continued on with life. Flight ops went through it, the loaders and tug drivers are going through it now and the bus drivers took their share of pain a couple of years ago. Ground services and IM have all had their fair share as well.
As I have said before, BASSA have done extremely well holding on to the current T's & C's but the millstone is now getting too heavy for the corporate neck and something has to go. Openskies was seen as a trojan horse and has, subsequently died a death. Whether or not it would have expanded to 'Jet Star' proportions we will never know but there was a lot of crowing from the sidelines that 'it was about time Nigels got their commupence'. Much coming from crew. What it wasn't though was a change to our T's & C's as we had already gone through the negotiations on that one.
Change is inevitable. CC are one of the last bastions of the 70's working conditions. Work with the company to find common agreement or I really do feel that the corporate monster that is Waterworld will, this time, steamroller you.