Dave,
it too worked in the regions and for BAR. I too took a pay cut of several £1000's per year for job security. New planes were mentioned but the way it was sold to us was 'aspirational' and not a guarantee. Simply we needed to address our cost base (to compete with the regional UK airlines) and invest in our fleet to attract customers back. Sadly this all came to late and the 'planes' we wanted, simply did not fit the new needs of the business as BA move slowly and the market moves quickly. Therefore BHX ended up with Airbus and MAN kept the 737 - that was what the market dictated and those in BHX gave as much as did those in MAN. BHX did a good job for many years keeping the 'low cost' out of their airport whereas MAN opened the door for anybody and even heavily discounted their pax handling/landing fees too (expansion at any cost for MAN, seems to have beackfired though..last time I was there it seemed a big empty airfield!).
What I did get for my salary sacrficie though was many years still working for BA that simply would not have been had we not taken the salary sacrfice back then. (for those who have no knowledge of regional ops, the planes ALWAYS belonged to BA, the regional management team were under instructions from BA they their existance and value to BA relied on them being competitive against UK regional carriers and of they could reduce their costs then BA might be tempted to invest in the regions and supply some better planes - this, in part, was delivered with the A319 to BHX - which was then taken back to LHR when we could not fill them and has to downsize to ER4 and RJ100).
I am in little doubt that BA would have sold MAN/BHX operations to Maersk (remember them anyone) who were waiting in the wings at BHX, just like they eventually did to FlyBe, 3-4 years ago if we had not taken the salary sacrifice back then. So in my opinion that was a good decision I made as it kept me in good employment and my family looked after.
nb: interesting footnote to this. The top union man the TGWU bought in for this negotiation was very interesting. He originally came in and told us 'they cannot do this to you' , 'your brothers and sisters in London will support you'. He used this to get the support and backing of the local staff/union members. Next time he came, he told us sadly London would not suuport us and we would be better to take the deal - it narrowly got through. Not long after, he left the union and was next heard of working for BA as an industrial negotiator (not sure if its true but staff were horrified when their local reps told them this).