Oldsalt, the thread has been hi-jacked by the usual suspects who have an ingrained ant-union view which comes from their employer ("join a union and we will close your base") or perhaps a bad experience in the past. I also was in your former union (although called Numast and even earlier MNAOA!) and my experience of them was not as positive as that with Balpa. When my then employer Shell was transferring all personnel to the Isle of Man and reregistering their ships it seemed that Numast stood by and did nothing. Subsequently a lot of things changed back but that was more due to the numbers leaving the IOM agency than union intervention. During 13 years at sea I cannot point to one action that Numast took which helped my employment although I do acknowledge that the nature of deep sea trade made contact difficult (by morse code!). My experience of Balpa has been reasonably positive most notably during a TUPE transfer and also when our pension was under threat.
I am going to put forward to the Balpa NEC that they charge a lot less (but then bump up the fee by charging a handling fee on bank transactions unless you have a suitably obscure pre-paid mastercard).
Last edited by tocamak; 4th Jan 2010 at 13:28.