As aviation jobs go EK is not too bad.
I believe the issue is with the world economics and the piloting profession.
The days of a good salary for being a heavy jet captain are gone. Worldwide they earn less in real terms than before. The trend is down in almost every aviation job. In Dubai it is exaggerated because the Dirham devalues daily and the inflation climbs in exponential fashion.
The world economy is in a mess because of poor governance from western nations. The eastern nations who are getting rich as a result do not have the depth of experience to spread the wealth. Hence a few get obscenely rich while squeezing the rest to make their billions. Ultimately this will be their downfall as history has shown time and time again. However that is not likely to be in the near future.
EK pilots must realise that they are simply highly paid labour, with minimal rights and ever decreasing economic options. Its not going to change and will in fact get worse as inflation sorts out the rich from the poor and eradicates the middle. See Zimbabwe for an extreme example of this.
You are not protected from exchange rate movements. The ERP fails to do this. It helps but it is a flawed and outdated system. It hasn't succeeded has it?
Inflation is about to explode with the ever decreasing dirham and oil climbing a dollar a day. The fallout from this will take a few months to sink in making our pay rise irrelevant in context.
As for the provident fund. Well thats a joke. It has performed at a rate of 5.5% over the past 10 years. Inflation has taken good care of that. You might have enough to buy a small car at the end of 20 years. Of course if they had simply bought oil or gold with the contributions, we would all be millionaires after 10 years service.
That's a fact.