Southwest flight came within 400 feet of crashing into the ocean

It's not a question of whether you are strong enough to move the flight controls.

The only thing the hydraulics do for you is to reduce your effort in moving those controls.

Control surfaces don't magically make the plane go up or down, or left or right. The only way they work is by pushing against the air flowing over them.

If there is not enough airflow over the actual controls - ailerons, elevator, rudder - you won't be able to control the airplane.

And if there isn't enough airflow over the wings, they won't provide lift. That is when you stall and lose all control, until you find a way to increase your airspeed and get some air moving over the wings and flight controls, so they have something to push against.

Source: my basic pilot training where I practiced stalls and spins and all kinds of loss of control.

Before the agreement, when it looked to all the trainmen like they were gonna get fucked again, there was a lot of anger and frustration with their near total absence of control of important things in their lives. They were literally meat to be shuffled like rolling stock up and down the tracks at the whim of their employer. As the terms of the agreements became more clear they realized that the railroads had to back off on their most destructive terms such that trainmen can now have a predictable work schedule, a higher rate of pay, better benefits, etc so it is definitely true that a lot of shit on railroads was broken and contributed to unsafe rolling stock and working conditions, some of that has been corrected simply by insuring that crews have sufficient manpower to manage the longer trains that are running and that the crews are more likely to be rested before they get on the trains. There has been a total attitude adjustment about employment conditions such that there are fewer trainmen looking to change jobs.

This whole collective bargaining exercise began with a majority of trainmen feeling like they had no opportunity to change anything and has resulted in a new-found respect for union leadership in effecting changes that benefit the people doing the work. The railroads, the FRA, the unions, and the administration sat down and worked through problems in a way that gave the employees tangible concessions and that was one thing that most employees would never have counted on happening since the unions had been nearly neutered since the previous collective bargaining agreements were signed around 20 years earlier.

Shareholders can get in line behind employees as far as I'm concerned.