"Rob Hall selling us down the river" is somewhat subjective, and certainly not my view. There were inevitably aspects of our pay deal which lead to unforeseen disadvantages but on the whole we came out of the whole thing very well as a community. I haven't seen the cabin crew unions make such gains any time recently. EG300 is a pain, it was signed up to without consultation by a single BALPA rep and he was thrown out at the next elections. Lesson learned there, but its frankly not that big a deal to me. We had less than half the sickness of cabin crew before EG300, despite our more stringent medical requirements, and still have much lower sickness levels. EG300 has not changed the way I or any of my mates operate. We are our own judges of our fitness to fly and we do or don't according to how we feel and not because of the fear of an interview with a junior office dweller. If some people feel intimidated by that well thats unfortunate. I don't. Personally I don't want BALPA to be more like BASSA and I wouldn't be a member if they were. I don't want to be told what to think and I want to achieve something more than just saying no.
PS The reason there aren't many ex-CC union reps in management jobs is because they lack the appropriate skills. I think that says more about the calibre of your reps than ours, something which is reflected in the results they achieve. I never fail to be amazed by the appaulling[sic] spelling in the BASSA newsletter.
