Despite its High Court victory last week, BA still faces a second ballot by its cabin crew and possible strike action in the New Year.
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Willie Walsh: facing new strike threat |
There may not be much cause for Christmas cheer in the household of BA's ceo Willie Walsh this week. It is not just that his beloved Liverpool lost to the Premier League's bottom team last week. More worrying is the threat of a disastrous strike still hanging over his airline.
The UK national carrier may have won last week's court hearing, forcing the Unite union to call of its threatened 12-day strike by 12,700 cabin crew members over Christmas and the New Year. But the airline won on a technicality - some of those who took part in the ballot, in some accounts numbering several hundred, had actually already left BA and were therefore ineligible. Unite claimed at the London High Court hearing that it had done its best to eliminate these voters. But Mrs Justice Cox accepted the BA argument that there were "serious and substantial irregularities" in the vote.
Despite her words in delivering her verdict that Christmas was damaging time to call a strike, her decision was not based on the merits of the Unite case against the airline. After the verdict, Unite's joint general secretaries Derek Simpson and Tony Woodley wasted no time in saying they would call a second ballot in the New Year. With the previous ballot delivering a nine to one verdict in favour of strike action, Mr Simpson, Mr Woodley and Mr Walsh know the cabin crew will vote again for strike action.
One chink of light for the BA side - and it is not a big one - is that there was some unease among members of the British Airline Stewards and Stewardesses Association(Bassa), part of Unite, at the length of the strike and the decision by Unite's negotiatiors with BA to call it over Christmas. The length of the strike, from December 22 to January 2, certainly was a surprise although, looking at the timing, A Christmas stoppage seems to have been the obvious intention all along.
It is quite possible Unite will also have taken note of the reaction by the British public and the British press - the second hardly a surprise - to this. It was vehemently opposed to such a stoppage.
From the BA point of view, Mr Walsh has the backing of his board and, according to some reports, of the City. As of now, it is the BA policy to be available for talks but to tough it out. The union's is exactly the same.
So the actual cause of this dispute - alleged changes in working practices on long haul flights - has become secondary to a stand off between two sides determined to concede nothing.
BA does not have the greatest of record regarding its industrial relations with staff and this episode has certainly not left it covered in glory. At the same time, Unite's conduct in calling a 12-day stoppage, was, in the words of Mr Simpson himself "probably over the top".
More hopefully, Mr Simpson and Mr Woodley said in their post court statement: "The judge's decision does not mean the end of the dispute. Only a negotiated agreement can ensure that."
But negotiated settlements require some give and take. It must be in the interests of both sides to reach an agreement which stops any future strike. Talk which should have taken place between Mr Walsh and the union leaders last week did not happen and there seems to be no meetings so far fixed.
Perhaps, after a thoughtful Christmas break, both sides will be able to see the sense of a negotiated deal without a lot of macho poses. Perhaps one will even pick up the phone and arrange a meeting. It is what most of BA's customers and perhaps the majority of its non-cabin crew staff would want.
The alternative to a deal is for BA to lose millions of pounds and for the union to see not just changes in working practices but, in all likelihood, many more redundancies.
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