Indeed, everything said already with regard to dissmissal for taking part in strike action is accurate.
What many seem to forget is that the company can make redundancies sooner than that if it had to to protect the future of the company. If any strike action is truely disruptive and routes are dropped, planes get parked up or returned to leasors, and therefore for each plane that leaves the fleet, so does that aeroplanes worth of crew (I've no idea what that is, but assume its the number of crew at VS divided by the fleet).
Then it doesn't matter whether you are in the union or not. If redundancies come about to keep the company afloat then off you go. Thats not being fired for taking part in a strike, thats being made redundant because the company has lost lots of money - nothing illegal about that. If you are here over a year, you'll get a payout, if less, you don't. Then again, if there is no more company, there won't be a payout no matter how long you've been here.
The 911 downturn and subsequent redundancies is a very recent and real example of this happening.
Its happened before, in fact some of those in our department are here at VS because that exact thing happened to them at BA.
As an aside, worryingly, there seem to be a lot of accusations, and claims if true facts arising on multiple forums (not just this one) that are nothing more than speculation from galley FM. "I've heard this", and "the story is that", and "its rumoured that" are simply not a basis for some of the arguments that have been appearing recently.
I have to echo the opinions of some of the flightdeck here that it might just be time for some people to grow up and think logically before they post. All respect for tightslot stepping in earlier.