The ballot is out. BALPA have negotiated from a position of weakness, i.e. against a ruthless and uncaring employer holding all the cards, and they appear to have done the best job possible.
I understand that BALPA wanted to explore methods of retaining ALL pilots with the entire pilot body making sufficient sacrifices like pay reductions, part-time, etc. but apart from the 300 retained in the Community Retention Scheme(CRS) BA intend making the rest of the surplus redundant. The reasons for this intransigence are unclear but possibly BA not wanting to see the pilots, uniquely amongst all workgroups, not suffering compulsory redundancies (CR). Who knows?
After some adjustment for disciplinary record and performance issues and a couple of other tweaks the criteria for CR then comes down to LIFO. The defence of LIFO is well understood but has the perverse effect of ridding the company of the cheapest pilots, retaining the most expensive and, for those on redundant fleets, allocating conversion courses to them. There is a double whammy for some of the junior vulnerable group because they are being cast adrift with their training loans which paid for their BA training.
Like all redundancies it is a worrying and distressing time for a few hundred unlucky people.