This figure that is being bandied about of pilots being 7% of staff vs 18% of costs comes, I believe from BA's own figures that were released to us a few days before the September 11th attacks. I'm pretty sure that the BALPA pay proposal had very different figures which pointed towards pilots being underpaid as a percentage of the workforce. Does anyone still have those figures or did you all also bin the pay proposal as soon as the second tower fell?
I personally suspect that, as with most statistics, neither paints a particularly accurate picture and that the true situation is somewhere between the two. What cannot be denied, however, is that we work just as hard, if not harder, than most of our colleagues in the UK and Europe and are not recompensed accordingly.
They can have my Christmas "bonus" if they want it, but I am not willing to sign up to a proposal that affects the lowest paid (new entrant CEPs) hardest of all, does not touch the highest paid and takes a major chunk out of the pension for people who are unlikely to reach the higher salary bands.