Oh give it a rest, Bongo.
Your "quite a lot" absolutely out trumps everything ALPA has to offer. To all the GA ALPA members give up your 24/7 access to critical incident response support. Give up your access to legal representation when your boss decides to sack you for refusing to fly when it is not legal. Forgo the savings achieved through group life insurance, loss of licence insurance and all the rest of the benefits available.
Hmmm... yes that's a valuable package all right. So valuable that I assume all GA drivers with half a brain would sign up immediately. But wait... they don't. Now I wonder why that might be...
Possibly because most of what NZALPA offer can be found elsewhere at similar prices, or is of questionable value anyway.
And you just know that if you have a problem with your employer, NZALPA are highly unlikely to help you very much. They know the percentages in such cases. But by all means, list for us any recent successes NZALPA have had in the GA world...
Mind you, I could possibly use the "24/7 access to critical incident response support". That sounds cool. So when I prang my kite, I have a sleepy NZALPA rep on the phone blowing sunshine up my ass? Yep, that would be very helpful, I'm sure.
I would have a lot more time for NZALPA if they were to occasionally walk through our door and chat to the troops... find out what's going on... sign a few folk up. Chance would be a fine thing.
Like I said... NZALPA could learn a whole lot from BALPA...
Oh and by the way, just so you don't think I'm anti-union, I belonged to the afore-mentioned BALPA for 25 years. And very helpful they were too. They learned that, although British Airways constituted 80% of their membership, they still needed to actively seek out and support the employees of "lesser" airlines. So they went on a recruitment drive that dramatically increased their membership, with a corresponding dramatic increase in their war chest, which led to a dramatic increase in successful actions against poor employers.
Yes, NZALPA could learn a whole lot.
I'm not against unions. I'm just against crap unions that only look after their money base.