Frogman you're comparing apples and oranges to justify your point.
If you cared to look at the big picture, you would realize that Cathay wants a union like the AoA, one that is not too big, but one that is extremely pliable. They would rather have a union like the AoA so they can show the public, shareholders, labor department, etc.. that everything negotiated was negotiated properly and fairly with a proper union, a union that only represents less than 60% of the pilot body. An example of this, which unfortunately has been repeating like a broken record, is when they put out an extremely sh!itty contract. They put this agreement/contract out knowing full well that the AoA will have some objections to the terms of the agreement/contract. They can then make some marginal perceived improvements, which by the way was already factored in even before the contract was published, and then pretend that they worked with the AoA to draft up something better. Hence all the AoA loosers will sit there and think that they in fact achieved something. Truth is though is that you achieved diddly squat.
You want to compare EK and CX, well for starters EK is a state run airline in a place where rules and liability don't mean a thing. In HKG, as weak as the labor laws may be, there is still liability and accountability, this was proven clearly with the recent 49er case and many other cases filed against CX by the FAU.
Furthermore, EK financially is in much, much worse shape than CX (don't believe the propaganda from TT), so they have had to take drastic actions. Up until the start of the financial crisis, EK was trying to improve moral, and stop people from leaving, by improving salary and conditions of service. Now all that is secondary. Rest assured that if CX was in a similar financial position, they wouldn't care one bit what the AoA thought or did.
I've been a big advocate of letting the AoA fold and starting with a fresh union, one that is run by paid professionals and not volunteers. We are big enough now that we should be able to do this, but yet we rely on volunteers that ultimately are being paid by the very people that they are confronting.