My old airline used to run a deliberate policy of keeping people down so that when there was trouble at t'mill, they could give things back to the pilots, but at a longterm cost of zero to themselves.
"Oh did you see they're going to give everyone the bases they want? They're having to give us what we want now". Wrong, they just deprived you of what you should have had in the first place.
Stockholm Syndrome at it's finest.