Koru - I agree with just about everything you say.

I do believe that we need to be mindful that in a global marketplace we need to watch what battles we fight. We have seen what happened to the Jalways pilots. We have even seen what happened to Continental in the 80s during the dark days of Frank Lorenzo. The union was broken and it took over a decade for some strikers to regain their jobs. Australia was a prime example of a union leading it's members into a battle they could not win. The list goes on. As a pilot group you have to have the leverage to counter the greater inherent strength of management. And you have to make it clear to management that it is cheaper to settle than to take a strike.

During the 90s the TWA flight attendents went on strike. ALPA could not honor that strike due to a no strike provision they had with Carl Icahn, a provision that was a condition of Icahn thwarting Lorenzo's theat to take over TWA. The TWA F/As were replaced in a month, ironicaly those same TWA F/As now threaten to cross an American Airlines picket line should the American F/As go out because the TWA f/As were dumped on the street after the TWA/AA merger.

There are very few times when pilots and cabin crews have common interests and the BA case is certainly not one of them.