That isn't why he shut the airline down, when not gatecrashing the Anzac Day Parade(because "we flew the troops" to Saigon) the Qantas Pilots were babbling about wanting "job security". Joyce knew they had a complete disconnect with reality but he could put up with them their red ties, although their verbal moaning to passengers about how tough they had it was becoming very tiresome.
He shut the airline down because the self proclaimed "engineers" (spe) had promised to do him slowly, and gradually escalate their industrial action. The spe had a lot of form in this area costing the company hundreds of millions of dollars in their various industrial actions on previous EBA actions notably 2005. The were happy to wreak complete economic vandalism on their own employer.
The shutdown brought finality to all of the industrial actions. What do you suggest Joyce should have actually done? , what were his choices ? Remember he was dealing with pilots who thought they had some entitlement to job security , and some who had deluded themselves into thinking they were some kind of combat veterans. Then he had spanner monkeys who thought they were engineers, and had form for costing the company hundreds of millions of dollars.
I would suggest to you that the man (Joyce) didn't really have a whole lot to work with