Dreamshiner - for reasons best known to yourself you have taken an overwhelming dislike to BALPA and set about destroying it at the very time it needs most support. From what I can glean you are a new pilot starting out or possibly one who has recently lost his job. I genuinely wish you well in that pursuit but the fact you do not have or have recently lost your job is not BALPA's fault. We are living in the worst recession in living memory and terrible things are happening to airlines round the world. You also do not seem to have grasped that any victories BALPA win can only be achieved by the support of their members. Most CCs are faced with managers who know that right now if they sacked their pilots they could replace the whole lot almost immediately with a fresh set. That will not always be the case, but right now pilots are in the weakest negotiating position they have experienced in my working lifetime. To somehow blame BALPA for this is at best naive. You have no grasp whatsoever of the realities of our industry right now and are simply a muck-raker trying to bring down BALPA because of your own personal difficulties.
Listening to some of the ill-informed comments on this thread, I am amazed at the lack of insight some contributors have to the realities under which we are living right now. They think that BALPA just swan into the Operations Director's office, demand a 15% pay rise and sit back to eventually receive 13% instead. Managers in our industry right now do not care if your or I live or die. We are facing voracious and immoral managers who can only see to guide their companies to the next bonus cycle. These are short term thinkers who are without a conscience and lack any real insight into the long term. BALPA are the ONLY defence we have, and all the reps I know are giving their waking hours to fighting our cause for little or no reward. All they recieve in return are the frankly pathetic polls of the type Dreamshiner is proposing. They simply undermine the support base of the Union even further and just pour petrol on troubled waters at a time when clear thinking and sensible actions are called for.