Having been out of action for a while - nothing serious I'm sorry to say - my reaction to All_scabbed_up (and nowhere to go?) 's post, was the same as Wiley's - he/she is part of CX's (losing) management team's poor attempt to try to indicate that there are hundreds of pilots waiting at the floodgates. A sign of desperation.
It might well behove All_scabbed_up to recall the FINAL outcome of the 1989 Australian dispute, from the Airlines' perspective. A dispute that STARTED with FOUR Airlines companies, and within 5 years ENDED with ONE - Ansett!! And look at its financial condition since.
Certainly the majority of pilots didn't get to go back to work for their original airline, but those who WANTED work found it, and in general, prospered.
UNLIKE the participating EAST-WEST, IPEC, AUSTRALIAN Airlines (TAA), and ANSETT.
The CX dispute is almost one month down the track, with the pilots not yet having done anything other than work as per their Company's O.M's.
Conversely, CX management has squandered hundreds of millions of dollars of the company's assets. Hundreds of millions that could have been saved through simple negotiation.
It is too simplistic to try to justify this excessive, unnecessary waste of money by stating "this management is focused". It makes a mockery of any past or future attempts to freeze or reduce ANY of CX's workers' salaries in the name of "cost-saving", when it is patently clear that management are able, and willing, to blow hundreds of millions of dollars in several weeks on a project obviously undertaken to try to save their collective "face"!
Shame CX management, shame! (Gough Whitlam, 197..something)