I’d estimate around 80-90% of the senior officers I know have gone back to shipping off the board at least once in their career. If you take away that seniority, they become entirely reliant on the company. No quitting for ethical issues, no leaving to try something different, none of the security that the union system otherwise provides. Getting a permanent job shouldn’t split you off from the union, and the seniority system helps keep it that way.
I think everyone is pretty much in agreement on that. It’d look great. Negotiations would be easier, wages go up, and we could all focus on expanding the industry instead of staying alive. To me, the questions of how it could feasibly happen are more interesting. The more I think about it, the less likely any full-scale merger seems with where we are now. I agree with tugsailor that I wouldn’t vote for it without knowing how seniority was going to shake out. But I would vote for an agreement between the unions to get out of the current cycle of inter-union competition. Especially with penalties for non-compliance. That’s a low enough risk/high enough reward proposition to take it out of pie in the sky territory.