I take umbrage at some of these quotes:
[To the rest of you, if your T & Cs are not as you would wish, it is up to YOU to do something about them. Takes some backbone though, which might be where the problem lies! /QUOTE]
I'm very lucky. I work for a company where virtually every one of my colleagues realises the importance of having a voice at the 'fat' table.
Others could be 'lucky' too. If they organise themselves! It's not rocket science.
If you don't like BALPA you don't have to be part of it - if you are part of it, then be active within it.
Too lily-livered in many cases, too afraid they might upset someone important and damage their career prospects in their airline. Much easier to blame those nasty BA pilots for all their troubles!
The plain fact is that those of you who work under substandard conditions are too disorganised, and in some cases too nervous, to do anything about it.
Sorry if the truth hurts!
I think I would be right in saying that most people posting on here, who work for BA, joined at a time when there was already a high percentage of union members within the company. Hell, when my father was in BA (ex Flat Earth W@nker with BEA on the 1-11) they had strong union membership.
When my brother joined BA some 18 years ago he was practically informed that he HAD to join Balpa in the first week of his course (the registration forms were sat in front of him on the desk).
When my BA colleagues started the sponsored course that I was on, a chap came down and told them to join Balpa and handed out registration forms.
What I am trying to say is that if you joined BA you are lucky to have walked into a company with a history of high union membership.
Others are not so lucky. I happen to work for a company that only has about 70% membership. I think Southernboy has a point about PERCEIVED bias. Which is why we struggle to raise the levels ( as well as some apathy and other reasons to boot). But even with our meagre 70%, we have a great CC who do some amazing work in protecting our T&C's.
To achieve the level of membership we have has taken a lot of hard work, we did not just walk into a company that had 96% membership. We had to talk to people to encourage them to join, to convince them it is worth 1% of their salary, to ensure them that it was no longer the BA Pilots Union (not easy with the number of ex-Dan Air pilots we had).
So please don't lecture us about having backbone etc.....
Finally good luck with the strike. I look forward to hearing that WW has got the boot, and you guys have kept the Trojan Horse out.