Union members acting in the long term interests of the airline [keeping their jobs]
That would be in the best interests of the employees then, that does not have to be the airlines. In a lot of cases this is the case, as a happy employee is a productive employee. But there are times when that is not the case, and its just antiquated jobs for life attitude.
What is it like at QANTAS, I have no idea, as usual in cases like this the two sides are to close to the issue to be able to make a cold unemotional judgment. As has been said a few times in the media the last few days, "do we need a national carrier?", would we better served with a few solid well run completly independent carriers?