Not hard ball at all and all valid points, but I would suggest that you are talking about the extremes, rather than the majority.
So much has been extremes, hasn't it!
If you take out all other factors, then seeing a new fleet of employees on minimum wage plus expenses, when you are either above or a long way above that position, will bring a certain amount of fear for your future. That will be the majority position. There will be some who are at the very top, who will be fearful of far more than that, but it is the majority who count and it will be the majority that will decide the end to this.
i can understand that ... but nothing in life is ever guaranteed. The futility I see in this is that BA are NOT changing existing T&Cs, they are just recruiting the successors on newer, cheaper terms. period!
As to a career change, if you go from one profession to another, but retain a package broadly the same, then all well and good. The elephant in the room here, is that you will have a large number of employees who are type cast to the current job and ALL of its benefits and whose training has been solely for there current job. To take those skills to an equivalent UK based employer will in all probability lead to a pay cut.
Ahhh ... type-cast indeed! There's another issue!! That's what happens when you embark on a full-time career with no other external options. That's what MF is designed to allow - a few years travelling with work before settling down.
So to put it simply, BA crew are paid on the face of it, above the market rate for the role in the UK and their employer has introduced new employees below this. If it was me, I would be worried and be striking for watertight guarantees. Whether they are achievable is the discussion point.
Yes, over-paid by Industry standards, and expecting guarantees that simply aren't going to be offered in the 21st Century. If any BA CC can produce documentary evidence that says "You have a job for life on your existing pay rates" I'll willingly be amazed.
The World changes. HMG is now about to prune the Military to un-heard of levels, and making redundant the very people whose lives are on the line in 'Stan. The majority of those signed up to do 22 years [if they got promoted far enough, and lived long enough] ... they may not now get to do the 22, one way or another.
You will understand that I really don't have a huge degree of empathy with those senior CC who expect to remain in post, on fixed T&Cs, until they draw their State Pension [or whatever BA's employment cut-off is]. However, BA seems to be allowing that ... and for which BASSA calls for strikes? Can you see the illogicality of that?