So you guys bagging on BALPA, let's hear some specific practical steps the unions could have taken last decade to stop this
from happening, in the context of the fact that it didn't actually happen at the unionized airlines (BA, Virgin, Monarch, Airtours & the rest of the decent charter airlines).
Bear in mind this (the mid-'00s) was also a time when the lo-co's were in massive expansion mode and the established operators were taking a massive hit on their intra-European traffic numbers. BA was running massive losses, hiring was certainly not on the agenda, talk was all of massive restructuring, everyone was in fear of their own jobs. XL went bust, Flyglobespan went bust, Virgin laid off about 200 pilots, Thomson laid off 70-80ish.
Nope 90% of the damage was done by the only two operators who were hiring in numbers at that time - Ryanair and Easyjet.
Ryan to this day doesn't even recognize unions, and while BALPA has managed to establish a foothold in Easy it's been more or less a history of barely having the membership numbers to be recognized, and constant firefighting with hostile management trying to stop the divide-and-conquer and the shaftings that occur every time they try to open a new base on lower T&C's than the others.
Legal advice was certainly taken by a couple of BALPA pilot committees at that time, and it was decided to not pursue legal action because to be blunt P2F is immoral but not illegal. As for the other pilots in other airlines - well they might have had a lot of sympathy but it is straight up illegal for them to take industrial action in support of what's happening at their competitors.
No guys I have to say the only thing that could have stopped it at that time was the wannabes themselves, if enough of us had stood up and said "no we aren't going to accept this becoming the new norm". Fat chance of that happening at the 200 hour level though.