ignore the legal protection for just one moment
The point is though that if you work in the UK for a BALPA airline, or at least an airline which if it ever became an collectively represented company it would be a BALPA airline, you are selling yourself and your colleagues down the river if you don't join.
It's no coincidence that the airlines in the UK with the best overall terms and conditions are BA, Britannia and Virgin. I am told that these airlines have the most cohesive, unionised workforce in the UK.
IPA isn't a union. It's a group of disgruntled ex-Air Europe pilots and various others who've bought into the Thatcherite utopia. I'm as right-wing as the next bloke, but I'm proud to be a trades unionist if that means I'm a BALPA member.
BALPA can't hold back the tide, but at least it can divert the flow in our favour if we've got the backbone to back it up.