xwind,
From your posts you would appear to be in your early 20's. That means you have around 40 years to run at CX. You could take the quick "fix" and upgrade a year earlier only to suffer for the next 39 years or you could suck it up for another year or two and actually live long enough to retire at this place. KA have a better contract than you and I because they stuck to their CC until they got what they wanted. It took considerably longer than 2 years though.
Do you read NTC's? Two crew have passed away well before their time in the last few months. The rosters on the airbus and 744 are simply not sustainable. The company are not giving 5 330's to KA to punish us - they simply cannot crew them even though they have pushed the remaining crew to the absolute max on the fatigue scale.
I can assure you that "things are that bad" on the two other fleets. I lost 8 nights sleep in the first 20 days of a recent roster flying around the region. Compounding the problem is that many of the duties flip flop from early to late and vice versa. I fill out on average 3 ASR-F's a month and monitor my fatigue using an online company that I subscribe to monthly. Most months my credit hours are around 84-90 which may seem paltry the 100 hours 777 crews are doing. You have to bear in mind though that most, if not all, of that flying is 2 crew so it is all sat in the seat as opposed to a bunk. 50% of the flying according to my logbook is also through the night!
We are not fighting over "an extra hour or so sleep," we are fighting for a sustainable career.