chequesplease,
I can sympathise with your sentiments regarding your roster that looks like a "war zone", although Im not sure I undertsand what you mean when you say "crewing are in it up to their necks".
I used to work crewing and believe me I took no joy in disrupting peoples home lives, taking fathers away from their childrens b/dfay parties etc etc.
At the end of the day crewing can only work with what they are given. I would suggest that if crews rosters are being changed to the extent you have suggested then this is probably a symptom of several factors including:
a) poor rostering practices in the first place. i.e continous rostering of rest periods close to the min required resulting in changes when the previous days flying runs high.
b) crew stengths lower than actually required. You may have enough numbers to make the paperwork add up but do you have enough to cover the eventualities that disrupt our working life each day
c) an unsually large amount of disruption to the flying program. e.g 25 mins to turnround a 737, no room for catch up if it goes pear shaped at the begining of the day = late running crew, high duty hours etc.
Finally your point on sickness and that changes are given days in advance. With the greatest resepect one Captain going sick on a Monday can have repercussions for three or four other Captains over the next seven days. If the Captain who replaces the sick staff memebr is out of hours for next day he needs replacing, and so on and so on....... However again this is probably due to not having the enough resources in the first place!
All of these factors are not the making of the everyday Crewing or Ops bod who are simply just trying to do their job with the resources and policy given to them, even if they do sympathise.
The issues you have are with the managment! Don't lump all of us on the ground in the same boat!
Good luck
p.s Im not easyjet so above is just a general view which may or may not apply to the boys in orange!