It seems from the outside that Q deliberately delays negotiations until well after the current EBA has expired. Then, after a significant period of no negotiation due to "other negotiations", Q's first offer is an obvious reject. This leads to the next offer which, invariably, contains a clause stating there will be no back pay up to the date of the new agreement being settled
arcs'n'sparcs you are spot on with that comment. Those tactics were regularly employed by Eastern several years back when I was working there. They would come up with an offer that was absolute crap, usually a year or two overdue, and then threaten us by saying if we didn't vote it up we would lose all our back pay. Negotiation by threats, intimidation and theft of our money that we should normally be entitled to.
Anyway that was one of the main reasons I decided to leave (and haven't looked back since).