All this talk of Big Airways matters (777 bunks,where's my b****y 20% pay rise, strike action, etc), rather than just BALPA matters , i.e the whole membership (of which BA are in a minority as we all know) is perhaps becoming just a bit selfish don't you think.
John getting elected is more for all of us rather than just one company's membership , and while he has only ever been in BA i'm quite sure he's hardly going to be just fighting for 777 bunks, it's a bigger issue than that.
whilst i understand the concerns of BA's members they are certainly going about fuelling the fire of "this is just an attempt of BA to hijack the union" in the right way, my view as a BA outsider is that they are only concerned about their own company. it is indeed a certainty that improvements in their t&c will help the rest of us but we need to act more as a union rather than a lose association of pilots, only by being all together on matters can we really get the management by the short and curlies. this will become especially true in roughly 12 months time when the pilot shortage really begins to bite- that is exactly when we need a strong union to be behind us. the problem with CD was he would concede too easily. we need a union/CC to galvanise all the members.
if we act as a cross-company group in the case of ballots for improvements it will have a far greater impact. whilst if airline X want a pay rise it would be rather silly for the crew of Y to also go out on strike, in the case of FTL improvements it affects every single one of us.
as an aside i wonder what BA think about John having two jobs- i'm willing to bet they hate the fact that the GS is one of their pilots! could be interesting
if anyone wants to know to save you asking of course i voted for John.