Norwegian Air Shuttle isn't four years old
Norwegian was founded on the remains of Busy Bee in 1992. B737 operations commenced in 2002 and B787 operations.... well that is a question of definition, but generally speaking four years ago. The pilot union had a scope clause, but unions are bound by legislative borders and as there were no bases within "reach" of the union. Therefore they were bypassed. NAS had an AOC called Norwegian Longhaul (NLH) which in turn received an exemption from the CAA in Norway in order to operate EI registered ac until Norwegian could set up an Irish AOC. This allowed NAS to bypass labour laws in Norway. As most know it took a long time for the Irish AOC, NAI to get DOT approval.
Meanwhile NLH received an extended period of exemption. When that finally expired NAS transferred most all of short haul to a new daughter company with a new AOC (NAN) and brought Longhaul on to the NAS AOC and received a exemption for NAS to pick up where NLH were "stopped".
Then new crewing companies were created to which the pilots were divided. Fortunately the person responsible for the CAA exemption accepted a position with one of the new subsidiaries in NAS and left the CAA.
And the saga continues-
I think we can agree that the top management in NAS is extremely clever and visionary. Critics say that they do not play by the rules, but I strongly disagree. They make their own rules.
They just re-write, re-route, adapt and prevail. Like it or not, there is nothing anyone can do to stop them. So join up or move along 😉👍🏻