Ralph, I appreciate the points you have raised, and I completely sympathise with those trying to get back home etc. ( I was one of them!). My point simply is that if we keep seeing our conditions eroded away by greedy management and shareholders, what will we be left with? I think an ideal that has been lost over time is that we are actually needed, and if we keep accepting lower conditions through the fear that someone else will take our jobs, this weakness will be played upon, and things will get progressively worse. If the
VB drivers had all refused to pay for their training, would they have scrapped the idea all together? Not on your life, but sadly the only place where such a scheme would have been acceptable was good old Oz (and suprise suprise now Easyjet in the UK!)