Overstress, Thank you for your post which whilst explaining the facts is pleasantly moderate and non-imflammatory unlike one particular poster on here. I certainly hope you are more representative of the people I will be flying with and look forward to that.
After our full integration of Bmed, some of whom even carried over their more generous favourable pension contributions from the company than we enjoyed and also had their training positions preserved etc, still unbelievably, there were a few dissenters. But in the main things quickly settled down to a harmonious workforce. After consultation with Balpa and the management we believed this was the only way to go and time proved this to be so.
To get to the point really, it is only management that benefits from rifts and divisions within the pilot community and in the long term is detrimental to us all if we are not all on the same T's & C's according to our aviation experience. I am therefore quite shocked at the short term view displayed by the BACC. If the BACC support us joining on the bottom of the SL together with much lower pay points then if management think we are happy with this then you can expect some very hard bargaining for keeping your own T's & C's in the future. Divide and conquer is a tactic that always wins.
Whilst I appreciate you have been fighting to preserve your terms recently I fail to see that as the integration is bringing more slots and hence expansion to your company that you would suffer, when we are only 300 or so, if we were zipped into your SL. You are not being asked to eke out what you already have but the integration is bringing more "food" to the table to eat so surely status quo. You do need extra pilots with a decent experience spread to fly the extra slots.
I really am sorry to hear on here that people think we are "lucky to have a job" (and yes we are) and if that is the feeling conveyed when we join then it won't be enjoyable having our noses rubbed in it while you guys quickly take advantage of the slot expansion whilst we sit at the bottom being made to feel eternally grateful that we are there at all. Not a good situation for pilot unity and a few short term advantages for you guys moving to LH whilst management ponder their next move.
You are probably right about the situation not being handled well but I think our BmiCC were caught by surprise at the hardened attitude of your BACC and naturally want to explore all options - not an easy task. I for one would have favoured a fleet bid freeze so you guys have first crack at LH that the extra slots provide then no BA F/O would be disadvantaged, not even much with bidline either as there would be more flying to go round and vacancies created when you guys move across to LH so again status quo.
So there are my final thoughts and I fear everyone will be losers (some sooner than later of course) the way it is all going.