The make an "illegal" ballot and claim that it is a sad day for democracy?

I had some friends, who tried to get a union in to their place of work, but they got the procedures wrong and it was kicked out by a judge... They accepted it gracefully - one of the cosigners had already handed in his notice - which sounds like a similar situation here.

I can see why the judge ruled the ballot illegal because it included some employees who have been selected for redundancy however I would have preferred to see what effect removing the redundant employees from the ballot would have. If doing so meant the motion wasn't carried then fair enough but I suspect this would not in fact been the case. If I was the union that's what I'd work out and use as the basis for any appeal I might launch.

Wouldn't it normally have had to have been a secret ballot? Or a show of hands. They would only have total numbers. That means the only way to get an accurate ballot would be to exclude those who have taken voluntary redundancy and make another ballot...

Yes but just over 9000 voted and 92% of them wanted to go out on strike.

The number of ballots that should have been excluded was around 1200 but even if those were all ignored there was still a massive majority for a strike - thats assuming these 1200 ALL voted for a strike in any case.

The union will just reballot and get the same answer again - waste of time.

The strike will go ahead and BA will eventually go bust.

Legally, an invalid ballot is an invalid ballot. You can't just remove a certain number of votes, even if it is such a large majority, you have to go through the whole process again...

Good! Bloody greedy unions. BA staff are the best paid in the industry and BA made a massive loss last year. Jobs must go it the company is to survive.

We are in a recession, we have people on "Kurz Arbeit" (short time?), where they have to take a mandatory day off every week and get unemployment benefit on that day, the state is trying hard to get its house in order. Now Verdi, the main union here, is calling for strikes, because they think, while the rest of us are tightening our belts, the civil servants should get a 5% pay rise!

As the question was "are you prepared to strike" but wasnt "do you want to strike for 12 days over christmas", a lot of those that voted could of been just showing there willingingness to strike for short periods. The union decided to go straight to the nuclear option and try and face down the management. If the unions get there way then BA will just go down the pan and everyone loses there jobs and benifits.
When your the best paid and have the best benefits in your sector then demanding you keep everything whilst your company is losing money hand over fist is short sightedness in the extreme.
Reasonable discussion has flown (no pun intended) out of the window.

I find it disgusting that they tried to force BA's hand knowing how much damage striking over Christmas would have. Its not so much that I care about BA but the poor customers who had Christmas trips planned. Its was a blatant move by the Unions to cause as much damage as possible. They could have gone on strike for a more reasonable amount of time at a less busy period of time and still made their point.

+1

unions very seldom win court cases over any type of strike action
i don't see BA MD's being made redundant or taking pay/pension/bonus cuts

only the staff have to bear the brunt of these cuts
when you are fighting a war with any company or their management there are no rules other then winning
that's the same rules that the management use to beat the crap out of the work force to achieve the companies means and impose the companies policies ensuring that the senior management are safe to pick up there earnings/salary/pension/bonuses etc at the expense of the work force

as it was senior management that led the company to this position not the work force as the 'management' make policy not the work force
i hope that the work force brings BA too its knees hopefully resulting in the sacking of senior management, as management deserve nothing less

management are the lowest form of legalised scum that just happen to work within this country …

I have to observe that a strike that doesn't inconvenience the customers is likely to have next to no effect on the board of any public company. It may not be palatable but the only effect of a strike that will actually be worthwhile is if it affects the company bottom line and the only way you do that is by affecting service to the consumer. Any strike which doesn't affect service (and therefore profit) is most likely to simply be ignored.

The whole thing is a mess IMO. The union have made a major misjudgment going straight for the 12 day option but BA's management have been a bunch of useless incompetents for years. Meanwhile this bunfight is going on at the upper echelons of corporate life, the poor sods on the 'shop floor' are getting a bum deal from both sides. The union patently haven't considered their members wishes in detail and the management have been eroding the cabin staff's conditions for years - long standing BA cabin staff on permanent contracts are indeed very well paid but recent starters are on fixed-term contracts for much less money.

Jon