I thnk you'll find it's only an issue if the percentage of VR'd voters will affect the outcome of the ballot one way or the other. Chances of that? Well, it will most probably be a yes vote so it will depend on the margin. It is a major chink in UNITE's armour, however... it may have been engineered as such, and you don't have to be a member of MENSA to work out why that would be something they may want to keep in their back pocket.
However, one thing surprises me about his thread, and that is that no-one has picked up on something posted a few days ago by one Jetset Lady. To wit:
Had an interesting situation the other day. The day the notices came out, advising us that managers would be contacting us, crew starting getting calls, supposedly from managers at Waterside, asking their view on the strike. I'll be honest, when I heard about it, I was absolutely fuming. We were on the other side of the Atlantic and only 3 hrs from pickup. Plus, one of the younger crew was extremely worried, following a comment he had made on the outbound flight. He thought he'd been "dropped in it", for want of better words. On arrival back at LGW, I went straight to the managers and told them exactly what I thought of the inept managers up at Waterside, only to have them all look at me blankly. Waterside managers weren't making the calls, I was told. Our own managers would call us. Following my insistence that they damned well had called, further investigations took place. And guess what. Absolutely no trace on any system of phone calls having been made, from either LGW or London. Then I started to think about it. The calls were made at 1900 local time in the UK, and we all know that Waterside empties out long before then. All the crew involved had different managers and some were of different ranks. Plus, the only people that had received the calls, were the BASSA members on the crew, or in other words, the only ones that BASSA would have had contact details for.
Now, I'm certainly not blinded to the ineptitude of much of the management, but in this case, I am forced, by the evidence, to believe them. So where did those calls come from? Anyone wish to put a theory forward
I asked a contact of mine, a senior manager in IFCE about the telephoning crew issue; he was admant it had not happened YET, but once a result was in and the intentions announced it would most likely happen as a reasonable means of ascertaining intentions and allowing forward planning, and was most definitely allowable within the contracts of employment as reasonable contact. However, he was also adamant that none had taken place to date, and indeed laughed at the idea that the company would start phoning round based on the announcement of a ballot; "Why would we do that, we would gain nothing, it would only piss-off those we want onside?"
So given that people HAVE been receiving calls from "BA," from whom, and where exactly did those calls originate? Given it is not in BA's advantage to make such calls now, who would gain from the propaganda benefit of such calls being made? Given the post above, and the given timings, perhaps someone recorded such a call? After all, it is moot to make recordings of such approaches during any dispute, the only caveat being that you are supposed to make the other party aware of your recording, but maybe someone has the "BA Manager" from "Waterside" on tape?
Far be it for any nefarious rogue elements within a union to seek a propaganda advantage from such subterfuge. After all, the union are whiter-that-white; let's see, didn't they employ a scheduler sacked from BA, one whom allegedly would have been in a position to allegedly give advantageous rostering towards the very senior persons in charge of the union, and allegedly did so leading to his sacking. Didn't said scheduler then walk into a job with said union? Wasn't said ex-scheduler them promenaded before the masses and tasked with delivering ballot notification to BA? Doesn't that strike you as being like politicians getting jobs with the companies they have protected and advantaged during their time in office? Armaments and Thatcher's cabinet, perhaps?
Hmmm. Interesting. Let's see the BASSA response to that. "BASSA 100%
" doesn't count, by the way.
Said it before, say it again; absolutely no problem with the crew I work with, they are to a man and a woman deserving of better leadership than they have. It really is time to reform BASSA from the ground up. Indeed, as they claim to be a
"progressive" union on their website, could someone perhaps show where they have been "progressive" ever? Like, seriously, ever (as my teenage daughter would say?)
Lions led by donkeys. Time to throw the donkeys over the cliff.