Rainboe,
What is good for the Goose, is good for the Gander.
Will you be reducing your salary to the new "industry standard terms and conditions"?
Will you be happy when AEU management reduce your salary, without consultation, to meet the new "industry standard terms and conditions"?
This will be the next event (believe me), as AEU management will use just the excuse you use (viability) to reduce your pay by bleating that:
times are tough;
margins are wafer thin;
fuel is rising etc etc....
I would be very, very concerned that YOUR management will be attacking your pay next. After all, if they will get involved in the unsavoury business of other people's problems they will most happily trample on your heads in AEU without pausing for breath.
The issue here is most definitely union busting, and if you've been a BALPA member since 1971 whilst working for BA and accruing a nice, fat APS pension, I would do one of two things, either:
a) keep your head down and stay out of a discussion that morally you can't win;
or
b) put your backbone in and admit what is happening is wrong.
You may not like NSF, his ideas or comments, but he is right on this. You are advocating busting a union, and that is shameful. Especially from a senior member of our community.
Finally, to use the argument that easyjet took BA pilot jobs is nonsense (or harmed BA at all for that matter). easyjet and Ryanair et al created a new market. The numbers of people flying in Europe now is many times greater than when easyjet started with 2 leased B732's.
The argument is a complete whitewash.
Anyway, over to you guys to try and defend the shameful tactic of union busting.