"As a trusted professional group of employees we would not be ignored if we had a safety argument. Often making some noise is more than enough to get the right attention. It takes one self-invented body or lobbying group to get the ball rolling. "
Being a pilot and claiming that the current system is affecting safety is very see through. It's easy to break it down and show that we're more worried about not earning enough pay rather than being worried about flight safety. After all, as far as I'm aware, there are no studies made to show that there actually is a correlation between pilot working conditions and flight safety except when it comes to FTL's.
In fact, according to a person I spoke to who is trying to investigate the industry, told me that the EU commision just recently passed an act prohibiting deep probing of airline safety records as the outcome of such investigations may negatively affect the economy of the airlines. The way I see it, the industry is painfully aware of the effects of deteriorating T's and C's and are doing everything to stop the risks of this becoming publicly known. If no-one can research it, it's impossible to say that T's and C's actually have anything to do with it. Being a pilot and saying that it does, is as I said, very see thorugh.
We need more credible research to prove that what we're saying on this thread is actually true. Until we have that, in the eyes of the public, we're just a bunch of overpaid and moaning busdrivers.