"Sounds like they're a bunch of greedy, whining d cks who need to join the real world...."
A tad harsh. I think if you ask any BA engineer, there has always been a 'them and us' culture at BA where the engineers, who at the end of the day, keep the big jets serviceable, often in conditions the rest of us wouldn't enjoy (fancy clearing a blocked B747 toilet?) to enable everyone else to do their job, are looked down upon.
I think you'll find that their a bunch of realists at the end of the day, who no doubt think, (dare I add, like the majority of professional pilots on this forum who often have not got a kind word for any of the inhabitants in Waterworld), that BA are shooting the ammunition at the wrong people.