I think you will find it will be the new joiners subsidising your salaries.
And no one, but no one, will force them to join. If the package no longer attracts then BA may have to revisit it. Willing to bet on whether or not it'll still get applications?
This notion that somehow we should all throw it all into one big pot, amortise the amount so we all get the same just doesn't happen anywhere and it never will. The fact remains that BMI pilots will join with their terms intact under the auspices of TUPE. For those in the hold pool, yes, there may likely be a decision to be made as to whether or not BA suits you under the new terms but, and I don't wish to sound patrician, some of you on here are banging on about BA as if it's your birthright and then, when the rules change (this is aviation - have they not changed for nigh on every company?) you expect the extant employees to bend to your will so you get some utopian sense of fairness.
There are guys before me on APS, guys behind me on BARP, guys with "early" commands and guys who are waiting and waiting. There's a thousand variations in BA already, this is another one.
The fact remains that for a person joining BA as a career (and, surely, it's always been regarded as a career airline) there's still ample opportunity to reach a salary which when stacked up against many of the flying jobs out there still pays handsomely. Rack in everything else we still get as BA flight crew and, to be frank, I'd be hard pushed to identify a flying job out there that offers better and, indeed, if there are, those can all be applied for too surely?
Sorry if that's not a truth that's wished to be heard on here but the notion that we should all be agitating for a marked diminution in our terms so that the collective can feel justice is served is absurd. Everyone has a life that is built at or around their means. As has been pointed out earlier on here we've taken a fair few financial licks to keep the company afloat in the last few years. This is another one - we know that BA are extracting an opportunity cost to integrate BMI. We've to decide if that cost is worth it and, frankly, if part of that comes with a 34 year pay scale for a career that can now span 40+ years then, yes, I'm prepared to go with that and I'll take my good fortune for being on an old scheme for once.
You might consider it pulling up the drawbridge behind me. I can almost understand that. But to have any expectation that I or many of my colleagues would do differently is to be naive in the extreme.
For what it's worth though I did vote to take action on the introduction of BARP for new joiners. Consider that hypocritical if you will but times, the airline and my circumstances individually mandate a different approach.
I still don't think BA offers a poor deal even under the auspices of the proposed scheme. Indeed your first year will still be what you were expecting it to be financially and if your financially aiming for some sort of projected income stability in year X based on 24 pay points then I'd wager you'd likely have been disappointed anyway with the number of convulsions we seem doomed to go through in this industry.
Finally, and as somewhat of an agent provocateur, why would those of you who think of us as selfish, self-interested and heartless souls want to join our ranks?
Fire away.
PS Fate hunter et al. I agree. I'd like to think a gentlemanly thing to do would be to honour the existing scales in circumstances like yours once you've made such a profound life changing decision on the basis of such information. For what it's worth, were there any caveats in your offer from BA? Not trying to be a weasel but just wondered.