Dalmation,
To a certain degree you are right, the guys and girls at the pointy end do get a better deal generally. But Unite are not totally useless as you paint them to be, take a look at the Thomson Airways Unite branch, we have some working agreements with the company that the pilots would kill for, including only working 4 days a week maximium even the pilots are forced to work more duties between days off.
I do think Monarchs union has picked the wrong time to start a fight, people are putting off buying holidays till around now and this will sit very heavy in their mind.