Scenario as follows:
Qantas need significant cost savings to survive in ever competitive deregulated global market.
Due to EBA's and Union muscle, wage cuts are not easily achieved.
Management "leaks" information about proposed 35% wage cuts and or significant layoffs.
Unions get outraged, much vitriol and rhetoric about '89 etc, talk of strikes and betrayal by fat cat management.
After initial outrage subsides and members have had time to adjust to proposed changes, Unions are eventually invited to bargaining table.
After much posturing and chest pounding, Unions and company settle for between 10 and 20% cuts to be implemented gradually combining wage freezes, productivity increases, workplace reforms and minimal job losses.
Sound familiar, sort of like the waterfront reform of a few years back. The Unions walked away claiming a moral victory, because they managed to stop the strikebreakers from taking their jobs, but in fact, the government and company achieved most of what they set out to achieve in the beginning.