I must admit I agree with you on a number of points. But there are some big hurdles that need to be overcome to reach that situation. There are a lot of guy in the industry who feel that they have been let down by BALPA in the past, this has caused a large amount of resentment to BALPA (very justified in some cases), add to that, that most pilots have memories akin to elephants when they have felt wronged in the past and appealing to these will be nigh on impossible.
BALPA still suffers hugely on the image that it is BA union. Different airlines experience different services from BALPA and often it is down to the individuals that are working on the company council to do the recruiting as well as manage all of the individual airline issues. With this being the case, it is often that the recruitment drive is done on the basis of a safety net or on individual company need and the CC past performance.
I fear that we have lost forever the notion of airlines paying for training from the start. With the international competitiveness of the industry and the way market forces now work, no airline with exception to the well established legacy majors will consider it as the cost they are willing to bare.
BUT…. by no means do I want to be sounding as if I am putting the nail in to the BALPA coffin, they are fighting over various issues with regulators and trying to protect the industry T+C’s and for this they deserve our support, however as the industry has evolved and so must BALPA, they need to be more open about what they are fighting for, evolve members more and review the way they communicate so that we can stop any further reduction in our industry conditions.