Pontius P - you are quite right, the members do have the final say and need to make it quite clear to their council exactly what they expect.
The problem we had in Virgin was Balpa 'commending' an offer to us. While some of us actually examined the offer and decided to reject it on the basis of being inadequate, too many people just took the council's 'commendation' at face value and voted yes.
The council were left in no doubt before serious negotiations began that we were all pretty unhappy and that there was a groundswell of support for hard bargaining. The council, it appears got too cosy with the management and folded after the first serious round of negotiating. Had the company council not 'commended' the offer and mereley left people to make up their own minds, I suspect the vote may have been different to the 51% to accept, 49% to reject. We are sometimes our own worst enemy!