Facts not Fiction
Having read the book, which was at pains to separate fact from fiction, and perused the judgments, I feel a little clarification is required following on from The Handover's and BuzzBox's comments.
Firstly, 4 independent referees (i.e. the HK judges to date), have summarised the events - or the history. There is no evidence put forward by the Company of any "sick-out" immediately prior to 9th July 2001.
The line of "our members are too stressed to come to work" was back in 1999, and was a result of CPA having given termination notices to 700 pilots. Fair call, I would say.
Contract Compliance (CC) had been on and off for about 5 years. The WOE campaign was in about 1987…
The Handover is correct that you shouldn't be fired whilst on sick leave (Employment Ordinance protection) however you do have to report one day… one of The 49ers was fired immediately on return to work on 11th July. Therefore, the other 49ers all must have been at work on 9th July - so hardly a "mass sick-out".
There is plenty of oral evidence from the likes of Tyler, Chen, Barley and Rhodes that The 49ers were fired pursuant to the union EGM decision to take Limited Industrial Action (LIA) - "the trigger" as one of the judges remarks. On 3rd July Maximum Safety Strategy (MSS) was implemented - all of which was about operations and nothing to do with sick leave procedures.
So, all in all, I'm afraid the facts don't support The Handover's statements, sorry, except for the "backlash" and "dirty response" to which I would say followed "above board, published tactics" i.e. CC, LIA and MSS.
However, I'm not going to disagree with BuzzBox as I can't vouch either way - except I do recall that Rhodes published a graph showing "spikes" in sick rates - but these were all AFTER 9th July. I agree that the Company was backed into a corner - Tyler, Chen and Rhodes testified as much.
The main difference is that the AOA and its members were taking LEGAL action and CPA management took ILLEGAL action. It seems, however, that it is the "innocent" victims that have suffered the most.