bealine - Personally (as an ex-ground engineer) I wouldn't appreciate Unite joining my departments negotiations to that of Bassa's.
Good Luck!
Your BASSA reps have not as yet been invited to attend, as the central Union officers of UNITE met with British Airways side to discuss practical arrangements for any future talks facilitated by ACAS. ( ie dates, venues etc before the specifics were dealt with by your BASSA negotiators.)
BASSA was represented by Steve Turner, National Secretary of UNITE.
In a somewhat clumsy and transparent attempt to isolate the Cabin crew community British Airways have insisted that all other areas, Ground staff, A scales etc are dealt with and balloted first before any discussions with cabin crew would be allowed to go ahead.
As we have previously warned you elements within the Leadership team are intent on singling out and isolating the cabin crew for the brunt of cost cuts. This manoeuvre would allow them to do that by leaving us to stand alone by possibly offering settlements elsewhere with the aim of weakening your resolve and to allow them to claim to the media "other areas except cabin crew have accepted cuts". This heralding a flood of outraged letters to BA news from "Andrew" in the IM department demanding crew accept these changes, as he has had to downgrade to a slightly smaller laptop, so why shouldn’t we have our agreements decimated etc etc...
Fortunately, our colleagues in the other areas of the union and led by Steve Turner were wise to this ploy and have refused to allow BA to isolate cabin crew and have insisted that the cabin crew discussions remain alongside all the other areas affected.
British Airways departed the talks in a state of some huff as they couldn’t get their own way, leaving a somewhat bemused ACAS who thought they were dealing with an airline in crisis.