Stu Bigzorst
You have kindly offered to do all this work for BALPA for nothing but you can't afford to join. Can I suggest that every pilot in easyJet could afford to join BALPA but many choose not to in order to spend their hard-earned cash on other things. It is all down to priorities. If you were serious about BALPA you would find the money and join - and so would I but I don't!
Herein lies the dilemna for many easyJet pilots. Is it fair to let others pay the money and do the work yet whine when you do not get what you would have liked in terms and conditions? Probably not. And yet 1% of your salary seems a staggering amount for not a huge return. The fact is that I resent paying that sum of money that could, for example, be spent on private health care which is not currently provided by easyJet. And yet I feel that I am not playing my part.
I left BALPA following serious misgivings about various issues at a previous company and was initiially delighted to have a bit more cash. I was thinking of rejoining and then the dreadful site of BALPA helping Jessica Starmer rob BA blind was just too much and I put off the evil day again. And yet, in my heart of hearts I feel I am sponging off other people. Like everyone else I will wait with great interest to see the results of the next pay round.
At first glance it would be easy to become disillusioned - BALPA managed to get an annual pay cycle changed to 18 months, lose the FO's loyalty bonus, agree in principle to get rid of the of the Captains' bonus in favour of a scheme that would cost the company less and to cap it all managed to negotiate away a week of leave for everyone! In the meantime 40 managers got a pot of £10 million to 'thank' them for their efforts during the GO merger and no easyJet pilots got a bean. It could hardly be regarded as a success and I am sure our bosses must be simply delighted to deal with such generous opposition.
And yet I cannot help but feeling that if we had a huge membership then the negotiating position would be totally different. We could fight for a proper pension (GB Airways recently got an increase from 10% to 14% and we are stuck on 7%), private medical care (wait until you are ill and you will know how vital that is) and proper leave arrangements.
So - what to do? I have decided on a course of action that I will share with the group. I wish to give BALPA a chance and give them ammunition to fight the battle ahead. I have therefore decided to join for 6 months starting in September and will wait and see what deal they come up with. If they negotiate away the captain's loyalty bonus for some manifestly worse scheme, fail to get the pension sorted and fail to get a sensible pay rise and don't get issues such as a London weighting on the agenda then I will leave. Equally, if it can be seen by a reasonable person that BALPA have achieved something that would not otherwise have occurred then I will be delighted and will encourage others to follow suit.
This is therefore my challenge to the doubters - give our CC a fighting chance and join up prior to the next round of negotiations (anyone give me a date for that please?). If they do well back them and if they do badly then leave. But what cannot be acceptable to is to give them no real clout and complain when they do not come up trumps.