They have an awful lot of airframes on order that EK will need piloted.
I heard that late last year, the CEO of Emirates was at the flying school in Adelaide for an Emirates cadet graduation (same school as CX uses), and passed his card around to all of the CX trainees, and said that they could have a job at Emirates once they finished their training if they wanted.
As bad as the EK package might be, it would still be an expat package, as opposed to the local terms C Scale on offer at CX.