The rest of your post was good...until I got to this sentence. Are you kidding me? Let's check two of the most "admired" in-house unions, SWAPA and APA.

SWAPA always was a forceful and blatant advocate of Age 65, long before ALPA reluctantly got on board. What a "great" in-house union that was! In fact, you can thank SWAPA for all their efforts that helped put ALPA in a no-win situation regarding Age 65.

Now the APA came out publicly against Age 65, and I applaud them for their honesty and forthrightness...but then not one congressman--not one!--even from the APA's own district, voted against Age 65. Boy, that's an effective in-house union.

So ALPA had to accept and live in the real world (something not advocated often in the bizarre alternate reality of these aviation message boards) and reluctantly switched positions so as to at least have a little influence in the legislation. I think that if left to SWAPA to be the sole voice in Congress, you would have had thousands of age 60-65 retirees coming right back to "their" left seats: "got mine, want yours" and all that.

So, I understand coming back from years of furlough just to see the union support a further stagnation in your career causing a lot of anger. I just don't see how changing representation, when the obvious examples are WORSE than what ALPA represented (at least in this example) helps anything.