We'll have to agree to disagree on that one. Some would have found a better career, certainly. But, a whole lot of them would have suffered immensely in the meantime... How quickly we forget that there are 28000 non-pilot employees here, and this place doesn't revolve around the pilots or our petty disputes (no matter how much we want it to). Many of them are quite happy here, and would take exception to your ideas that they would be better off if their job went away.
I'm a west pilot and I agree with you here. I always thought it was a little simplistic to state that furloughed easties, or any other for that matter, should have moved on because they supposedly should have known.
Now we are getting to the point where in retrospect it may look like the same could be said of the westies at some future date. Only it aint so simple now that we're in the middle of it.