"Every battle is won or lost before it's ever fought."
-- Sun Tzu, The Art of War
“The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.”
-- Sun Tzu, The Art of War
The companies leverage is not as strong as many believe it to be. Belief in the opponents strength or weakness will be a very important factor in the minds of those who will vote on the next agreement. The company needs to convince the you that you weak & defeated before the vote.
The company has carried a very large surplus of pilots across the entire group for an extended period of time. This occurred for a variety of reasons, age extensions, delayed deliveries, duplicated flying by new entities etc. Some of this was foreseeable, some not. However, the more intriguing observation is the way management have responded to the surplus. There have been some MOU transfers, VR & LWOP, but for the most part the surplus it appears to simply have been accepted. Why?
If pilots were to be made redundant due to a surplus, surely it would have been done at the start of this process, not the end? It has cost hundreds of millions of dollars over the last decade or so to carry surplus pilots on the books.
There are other possibilities. One is the company has a legal advise safely buried under lock and key that says it cannot be make mainline pilots redundant given the way it has handed flying to other internal group entities employing outside the group. They would not be required to disclose this advice, even if it did exists.
Another one is they anticipated using the pilots but delivery delays were longer than they anticipated.
I am simply looking at the actions of management, and attempting to infer motives & agenda's, whilst also being cognisant of Hanlon's razor.
The company is clearly playing the rumour-mongering game about "other entities". That is their job F.U.D - Fear Uncertainty & Doubt.
However, stop and consider what would happen the day after the 787 flying is given away (assuming it were even possible under the integration agreement)? How would management deal with the continuing surplus? Could they make a large number of pilots redundant under these circumstances? And if they could, why haven't they already done it?
As the Sun Tzu quotes illustrate, the Art of war is to not fighting at all. It is to convince your opponent they are defeated before the fight, to surrender & submit peacefully.
The company needs to convince you, it needs to control your decision, for to believe in your heart-of-hearts, to your very core that acquiescence is your only choice. It is to convince you that at NO vote to a crap deal is a career destroying move.
Consider any deal for a new type carefully, and how it may affect you for a very long time, no matter how remote that possibility may appear now. You don't need to take a crap first offer to "secure the flying" & hope to improve T&C's later (see the Jetstar EBA - it won't happen). The next agreement will be a watershed, a pivot point in history. Given the likely changes in fleet, there is no "B Scaling" someone else. Pilots will get to live with the full consequences of their own choices. This is the biggie.
History says you have more leverage than management would have you believe, if for no other reason than your continued employment.