The Globe and Mail reports in its Thursday edition that on Tuesday, just hours before 750 Air Transat pilots were set to go on strike, the negotiating team for their union announced a tentative agreement. Guest columnist Barry Eidlin writes the pilots had agreed three times to extensions of their 2015 agreement to help the company through crises, including an attempted takeover by Air Canada and the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. But this year pilots said "no more." The pilots were seeking what they called a "modernized" agreement, with better wages at its heart. The process that led to the tentative deal serves as a useful illustration of how collective bargaining is supposed to work. The fact that Air Transat was facing its first strike in its 38-year history speaks to the charged collective bargaining environment of the past three years. Workers across Canada have gone on strike at levels not seen in decades to make up for lost ground after decades of stagnant wages, eroding job security and shrinking benefits, with high-profile strikes in rail, at the ports and Canada Post, and of course at Air Canada and WestJet. In the absence of threats of government intervention, the pilots' strike notice worked as intended.