US carriers are effectively limited to a form of contract compliance due to Taft-Hartley. No major American carrier strike has lasted very long before a presidential back to work order--even during Clinton (supposedly labor friendly) American (I believe) was ordered back to work within a few hours.
Although in a climate somewhat more favoring labor, US pilot unions are not in that much better a position than the AOA.
Yet their form of contract compliance when unified and coordinated forced a hostile managment to reevaluate their position and take a more goal oriented approach. And several carriers have negotiated decent contracts because the amount of QUALIFIED airline pilots is supply limited.
If some form of action is initiated (and stays together) it will exacerbate a manning situation already at crisis-managment levels. And it's NOT like qualified pilots can be spun up over night. Training is already maxed out and any form of industrial action would degrade this. Strikebreakers (or whatever you want to call scabs) don't externally exist in this career field as much as others due to the lag time to get people trained and spun up (which is a great asset in industrial action).
So the position can be strong and successful and potentially force a positionally oriented negotiation style to one which wants to make long term money for all parties involved. It's NOT like the world is going to face a glut of qualified airline pilots over the next few years--especially given regulatory changes in the US (which for what it's worth I don't agree with). Asserting authority for asserting authorities sake doesn't profit in the long run.
EDIT: I strongly disagree that the general public perceives well trained pilots as greedy, lazy, overpaid button pushers--especially in light of recent events. In fact, I've seldom seen this anywhere when talking flying with people. In fact, our image RELIES on painting us as the motivated competent professionals that we are.
Last edited by Shep69; 28th Jul 2014 at 13:23.