Great post Norman !! Shame it is absolute codswallop
Our leave system, the annual leave system which applies to all pilots, is that we each apply for a calendar month in a single block and the remaining 10 days we take in another 1 or 2 blocks. Because we have a wrap round system in place, 5 days leave is actually 13 days off, and a calendar month counts as 18 days leave.
The BRK contractors just put aside some of their huge earnings to cover the month off: the rest of us get paid our basic and our other allowances ( which you don't need to know about).
We didn't negotiate any pay cut: all we did was adjust the leave system, bearing in mind that a lot of people, like me, who don't have school age children, don't need leave in school in holidays any more and are quite happy to take leave over the winter ( Caribbean is still warm as is the Far East). We still have eactly the same amount of time off as leave, we just have in different blocks.
One of my colleagues has just returned from his month off having travelled to Malaysia and the Phillipines: another is looking forward to having his ski-ing holiday in the whole month of February and I am still to decide whether I go to to Australia for my month off - never had the leave to be able to travel that distance before - or just head off to the western US or Caribbean. When I talk to my colleagues about your " forced paycut leave system" oddly enough they all love it, because your spin is utter tosh and divorced from reality.
Turning now to your threat of strike action, exactly how far do you think that will get you? How much "solidarity" do you expect from your other union members? Will the BA pilots stand shoulder to shoulder with you? Will the bmi pilots be there, warming their hands over your picket line fires with their "brothers" from bmibaby?
The bmi / baby guys with 737 TRs won't: they will doing the FR interview and sim to get a job that pays better than the one they have been made redundant from - what did BALPA do for them - is more secure and offers them a career with roster stability, high earnings, the opportunity to bid to work in any of 34+ bases around Europe and a great leave system.
All that will happen is that you will rattle your rusty sabres and the management wil offer you a crumb or two, push through what they want, promote a few of your CC to LTC / TRE / Management posts, close another base and force retirement on people - we aren't making you redundant, there is a job for you in Milan / Berlin / Insert new Polish base here.
You carry on supporting the good cause, and when you go on strike we will pick up your disgruntled pax, or what is left of bmi will pick up your ticked off pax, or Wizzair, or Vuelling / Clickair or Air Berlin or Germanwings.
Get the idea ????
The travelling public has a huge choice of LoCos: if you lot strike they will just change carrier. Pyrrhic Victory for BALPA.
Now if your BALPA is so great, perhaps you will explain, in some detail and with a substantive logical argument, why they have approved the use of cheap labour at easy ( the CTC cadets ) facilitating their exploitation by the company, and the introduction of 145s at LHR with bmi, in breach of the scope agreement, which is now threatening mainline jobs in the wake of the LH cutbacks? Can you tell me what they did to protect / help the guys at Silverjet / Excel ? I won't go on: you get the drift.
And finally;
Indeed you are representative of those proud Ryanair pilots who scuppered BALPA's plans at your company earlier this year.
I wasn't a representative, nor am I now: myself and Leo were the leaders and continue to be.