The Association does great technical work and the insurance and legal benefits are good.
BUT ... and its a huge BUT, their industrial negotiating skills are sadly lacking. Not only this but they have recently ignored a membership mandate to initiate limited industrial action and failed to stop a base closing whilst there was still a chance of doing so. I'm happy for them to stop representing us at the industrial table and ask the company to deal with 2500+ pilots individually at annual pay review time. Start making your appointments now.
Having said all of the above we still have the option of sending the NT back to the table if indeed the offer is not quite what some of our people were expecting.
Those who say that a refusal of the first offer will lead to an inferior second offer were clearly not here in 1999 when we parked most of the jets, and an improved offer was forthcoming. I hope there is a industrial sub committee making contingency plans, but I wouldn't bet on it.
