Believe or not I see the blessings hidden in disguise nowadays!
Having been around the traps due the well known circumstances I've seen the airline world from different angles: not just GA, turboprops, & then CX. More over the common theme is greed from self serving airline managements & pilots with less & less experience or credentials saying thank you. For without the greed the standards wouldn't be so low & theyd not have a job (at CX). That inexperience comes from (severe) immaturity, which breeds ignorance & harbours inexcusable arrogance. All the while the spiral goes down.... Guys like this fella are not CX exclusive but indicative of what the industry is fighting against. And they don't have a clue.
Running to EK (i.e., the main topic of this thread) is not the answer in my opinion. What's counter intuitive is that at CX you have a union, ooops I mean "association" to band together to protect your livelihoods & defend against detrimental pressures on your career: safety & standards included. In other parts of the world like the ME you have no such body to band together with. What's ironic is that it doesn't seem to matter at CX as you might as well be at any of the ME3 by the way a) your pilots shaft each other anyway (G day workers, training volunteers, C-Scale, RP,s, etc), and b) no association to truly protect the present & therefore the future of your own careers, safety & standards (refer John Warham).
As written earlier: CX to EK might as well be jumping out of the pot & into the fire. But you guys have a big bucket of water to use to ease that fire. Yet at every turn as history has proven neither the AOA or little soon-to-be-in-the-majority SJS brat has the kahoonas or maturity / experience to use it.