Well, my impression is that the NYT article is not representing the mainstream of public opion, not even the full reporting in business friendly publications like Handelsblatt.
VC has a good reputation as an advocate for flight safety, and they were up to now not being perceived as an aggressive player in labor conflicts. The norm in Germany is that there is only one union representing all employees in a company, so e.g. for Siemens and BMW, it's the metal worker's union which will also do negotiations on behalf of the engineers, the administrators, the cooks and the janitors (unless these service jobs have been outsourced, that is).
Resentment from the big unions usually surfaces when there is a specialty union representing only one profession with a small number of employees that can do maximum damage calls a strike to demand substantially more than the big unions are able to negotiate for the rest of the employees, e.g UFO (LH cabin crew), GdL (traindrivers) or in this case VC.
One the one hand, VC are calling for a 10% raise and a continuation of the generous retirement package (the total amount of the retirement fund is 12 bn €, about half of LH's total retirement obligations), on the other hand LH management has been aggressively slashing employee benefits and promising its shareholders (three anglo funds being the largest with a total of 15%) 2.3 bn € operating profit for next year.
Interesting graphic about pilot pay:
http://www.handelsblatt.com/images/i...atOriginal.jpg
Now why are some major players like AF missing?
How do Etihad and the likes get away with paying so little?