Yea, guy needs to do some homework. Airlines WOULD have more power but congress neutered that with the RLA. Manufacturing and refining can be operated on skeleton crews not to mention they can prepare for strike by storing capacity, and still have product to sell during a strike.
I think in reality striking wouldn't help to much though Europe does it a lot and they haven't outpaced America. What actually happened was deregulation and lower margins. In the 70's only the wealthy flew so the pilots could make much more, because the margins were there for the amount of work being done. Now that a McDonalds manager can fly somewhere on vacation the model couldn't support the pay.
If half of all flights were canceled and every ticket cost $1,000 bucks the pilots that were left could make double their current pay scale. Problem is shareholders want growth, just look at Chipotle. For an airline growth means more work for the same amount of money. The pendulum will swing ULCC wont be able to staff their growth and margins will go up and with that the pay scales.