[A pause, not as if he's shocked, but if he's selecting his words. (Or, perhaps, double-checking that the message is private.)]

I think that, as long as the crisis remains acute, they are not willing to do without mages, or even the majority of mages. In that, the strike achieved one aim. It proved that they were not willing to discard the resource, even with less than perfect docile passivity.

How far they can be pushed, or wisely should be, is a different question.