How about my situation? As an ab-initio, I had to pay for my type-rating but it is currently being paid back to me over the term of my contract which is less than two years long. By doing things this way, the airline put more of the risk on me during my type-rating and line training. I expect they could have found type-rated pilots elsewhere in the industry but by taking on a group of ab-initios, they were giving a group of 'newbies' a chance but without taking on most of the risk.
It took me a long long time to get my job so certainly don't think of myself as jumping any 'queue' (note correct spelling). It is interesting how the British culture we are used to leads us to expect pilots to go through a 'passage of rights' and suffer for a while before being successful. Is a pilot who gets their success early somehow less deserving than someone who doesn't?
I did not pay for my type-raing out of desperation for a job and to beat anyone else to the post. I appreciated that I was going to work for a relatively small jet airliner operator who was just trying to minimise the 'risk' to their training costs. As already mentioned, these costs are being repaid to me over time.
Incidentally, I was the only person in my intake to be a member of BALPA. Naturally, I encouraged the others to join.