Maybe one way to turn around this nonsense of paying for the privilege to work by paying for your Typerating is to inform the public about the real situation in the flying business.
Let the media, study/career counsellors know how it really works at this moment so the number of wannabees will decrease.
If BALPA/IALPA would make an effort in informing the right channels/media the market will favour pilots in the future and the negotiations will become easier.
We need to attack those "we need a lot of pilots because of the pension bulge" nonsense stories which turn up every time an aviation specialist from the newspaper visits a flight school.
Last year such a story appeared again coincidentally one day before the new website from the KLM flight academy was launched.
Just my toughts,
Cheers JB