You direct your question at Microburst but let me chip in a bit more.
I'd be onto my BALPA reps and be over them like a rash wanting to know what the score was and what they were doing about it.
I think that using the TOM example, it would be fair to say that the BALPA reps were squeezed from both ends during the negotiations about the pilot surplus at TOM. I was one of many affected who were regularly on the phone to the reps. I have no idea how much traffic is being generated on Easyjet's BALPA forum or any company bulletin board which may exist, but in the TOM case the exchanges on the BALPA site's main pilot surplus thread alone are over 40 pages long and it spawned many other multipage threads.
It has been very fiercely debated even on the company BB and has got very heated at times. Either the easyjet peeps are really good at keeping any turmoil under wraps or there is little turmoil. Think I know which one applies here.
Gyni, you're right to ask what would YOU do if YOU were an easyjet SFO. That's why EGCC4284 is also asking the question and he doesn't seem to be getting much back. It makes his point rather elegantly don't you think?
Your rhetorical tricks with Microburst, because you think that MB wouldn't actually put their money where their mouth is, illustrates that you don't really understand why the easyjet pilots should be getting far more fired up about this. Either that or you do and you think it's a done deal.
Before too long the easy pilots will be watching the horses ringpiece disappear over the horizon and realise they've left things far too late. If they think they can just move on when things pick up - well if 2 of the largest recruiters aren't taking experienced pilots now when there are shed loads of them on the market, what's the industry, as a whole, going to be doing recruitment-wise when it all picks up. There'll be nowhere to go - unless you're fresh out of flying school with credit to burn.
The US is legislating to stop this, bit of a blunt instrument IMHO, when better oversight and sharper regulatory teeth would have sufficed. Maybe the regulator needs to get some balls too.
HS