It has been mooted that what is needed at BA is a BA pilots union, as opposed to BALPA. By the existance of such an organisation, the BA pilots could ensure that their union was concerned soley with their interests. This I feel would lead to a far stronger opposition to giving BA work away to franchises and subsiduaries, since the interests of all the members of such a union would be the same, as opposed to the varied individual interests in BALPA at the moment.
The A320s at GB were initially destined for BA as 757 replacements, and were later refinanced by the Royal Bank of Scotland fo GB. The reason that BA no longer needed them was because of the effective hand over of BA routes to GB, who in the customers' eye now operate those routes as BA.
The winners, GB pilots. The losers, yet again, BA pilots. The real savings overall, nil.
I can't blame the GB pilots for being pleased about this, but maybe the time has come for a BA pilot UNION, as opposed to a British Airline Pilots Association.