Complacent, lazy, unhelpful, arrogant and unsympathetic are some of their better ' qualities '
The problem with this argument is that a union is only as powerful as it's own members. If BALPA is unhelpful, arrogant and unsympathetic, then that is because the workforce members, i.e. the pilots themselves are unhelpful, arrogant and unsympathetic. A union branch is only as strong as the unity of the members of the branch. Pilots are typically well educated, relatively well informed and tend to make their own decisions, they do not provide fertile ground for the typical union which operates best with an uninformed and malleable workforce that will respond to the union leadership when it demands a strike. Blaming BALPA for this is just intellectually lazy.