Snooky;
'Just consider how you would feel, though, if GB started to franchise out their routes to an airline that in general paid its pilots the same with the pretext that GB could not profit on those routes.'
Firstly BA pilots earn considerably more than their GB equivalents and at EOG were contracted to fly fewer hours. This is fact and if your management tell you otherwise, they are being economical with the truth. (This is the only thing they are economical with!) BA is paying over market rate. GB pays market rate. If GB decided that routes were uneconomic I would expect them to either cancel them or talk to its flexible workforce on options open. In fact GB Airways did just that. for sometime a BRAL 146 operated MAN-GIB-MAN on a wet lease.
It was clear that this was uneconomic on a B737, zero unrest amongst the crews, we live in the real world, with real economics.
This route proved uneconomic on the 146, it no longer exists, that's life. However if the lowly paid pilots in BA think its a goer, well feel free. We will not think you are stealing our route, honest.
In fact after the Gulf war the GB pilots took a considerable pay cut one winter to avoid layoffs and ensure the survival of GB. Some crews were on half pay. I cannot imagine BA pilots entertaining this, and GB were not as far up the creek as BA is now.
With regards BALPA and BA, the world will still turn without BA pilots in BALPA and/or without BA. Don't you think that to believe catastrophe will befall the rest of the industry without BA or its pilots is perhaps just a trifle arrogant.
BA is defying Darwinism at the moment, natural selection will always dictate the survival of the fittest. That is true of every airline in a free market.