It's your association, make it work for you!
Firstly, just to make clear, I'm not employed by BALPA, I'm a serving airline pillot for a UK charter operator and just happen to be have elected by BALPA members within my airline to represent their interests with our company.
A lot of bollocks is talked about BALPA, on this website especially.
For the benefit of MoT, let's look at the financial figures quoted. I have never bothered to look at BALPA accounts and I have no idea why anyone would bother printing them out and attaching them to a crew room wall.
Looking at the £690k figure for expenses, salaries and offices. Firstly expenses. I suspect most of them go on reps like me. Our airline has 10+ bases around the UK and I spend quite a lot of time on the road serving my members. To do this I'm reimbursed for my mileage, the odd flight and reasonable sustenance. All of these are paid by BALPA and I reckon I cost about £500 a month, i.e. £6000 per year just one me. I wouldn't be surprised if many Company Councils cost £50k+ in expenses alone.
Don't for a moment I'm making money on this deal. I lose thousands every year in flight pay and allowances.
The BALPA office is now on Heathrow Blvd. It's a modern office building but nothing extravigant and to be honest is only just big enough. It houses all the office staff, which in the main are just there to support the activities of reps like me and most couldn't be considered high earners under any circumstances. At the top, the General Secretary is on a fair whack, but still only on a middling LHS jet salary.
As for defending members, this is the bread and butter for us reps and the most important thing we do. I have no idea which budget this comes from, but we rarely have to call in the lawyers as our relationship with our company means we don't have to and in any case BALPA head office usually has enough legal experience not to need to call the solicitors on a regular basis.
It's a shame there appears so much dissatisfaction with the association. As is often noted it's a member driven organisation. Dysfunctional airlines tend to have dysfunctional company councils, and these are when makes the difference in member's experience of BALPA. This may explain some of the vitriol and bile displayed on these pages.
I would like to think the high levels of membership within my airline reflect the standard of service we provide.
Pilots as a generalisation are self motivated and dare I say selfish individuals, who tend to look to others to make a difference. Many of the comments on Prune reflect this and anyone reading them should bear this in mind. Also, the larger airlines mostly have very active forums through the BALPA website and this is where the adult debate takes place; they aren't anonymous and any statement made must be against your real name. It's all very easy to talk tough with the cloak on anonymity...
I entirely agree that BALPA has been utterly gutless when it comes to dealing with pay as you fly type arrangements. I think it's finally starting to rouse, and hope it's too late. To balance this, as I mentioned in my previous paragraph, it's easy to talk tough when sat anonymously in front of a keyboard, but would you really have the balls to go on strike over it? I'm not sure you would.
Does anyone honestly believe that industry terms and conditions be any worse if BALPA didn't exist? In my company, not a week goes by were the management doesn't try to take something from us or dilute what we have. Our Company Council is the only thing stopping them. And we're one of the better companies in the industry.
My final thought is this, if we all decide to be non-members, eventually all of us will be blind.