Sad for the folks involved, but hardly a surprise, and hardly the fault of the management when the unions point blank refuse to accept market rate terms. Even the best CEO in the world, getting paid $1 can do nothing when a union would rather drive the company to bankruptcy than accept a reduction in salary for their members. We passengers don't want to pay more than we have to and that means the staff will have to accept different terms, or get another job.
Please let us know what the market rate terms are! My company made over 1/2 BILLION dollars last quarter. My CBA is still in negotiations from the emergency concessions we made following the terrorist attacks of 9/11. I can guarantee you, we will be getting a raise and better work rules. This bankruptcy makes it much harder for us to do so, as our company will now cry about being competitive with a company in bankruptcy. So what do we consider market rate terms? Did you take into account that the pilot contract at American already gave them a paycut after 9/11?
In the USA airline labor relations are governed under a lovely set of rules known as the Railway Labor Act (RLA) These rules were imposed on railroads back in 1926 and extended to cover airlines in 1936. They create very strict controls on labor relations. These rules make it very difficult for pilots to negotiate new contracts, and seniority rules make it extremely difficult to just decide to leave a company if the contract isn't what you want it to be. Imagine working 20 years in a business, but being told if you left the company you worked for to move to another the most you would be allowed to make is the entry level secretary wage, though you will retain the responsibilities of your position.
The RLA defines things as major or minor disputes. Anything relating to a current contract is a "minor" dispute. Labor is not allowed to strike for minor disputes. Disputes are only classified "major" when they relate to negotiating new contracts. For pilots to take any kind of action on a major dispute, such as a strike, the national mediation board must be involved. First, we must negotiate for years, as management has no incentive to provide a new contract. Then NMB has sole decision making responsibilities when it comes to determining whether progress is being made. If no progress is being made, we continue negotiating. If some progress is being made, we continue negotiating. If some progress is made, and there are only a few key points we can't agree on, then the NMB either keeps us negotiating, parks us (ceases negotiations) or releases us into a 30 day cooling off period. Only after those 30 days are we given permission to strike, though the President can form an Emergency Board and delay any strike for another 60 days.
Please note that we are now frequently years past the date that our old contract was supposed to end. For this reason, a 4 year CBA here can frequently last 7 - 9 years. The reason we as pilots are so concerned over short term concessions or signing on to a substandard new CBA is because we will most likely be stuck with those terms for a significant number of years. We typically don't have the option of jumping ship to a new company once we've committed significant years to our current company. Basically, we need to look out for ourselves because surely no one else is.