I was sitting round a table listening to Derrick Simpson a few years back, when he was suggesting the reasons why it was so important that Amicus and the T&G merged. The most fundamental reason, was the power to effectively lobby Government and 2 million voters is a big voice.
I must admit this made me chuckle when I read it. I can just imagine similar cozy chats with Derrick if two large employers decided to combine and cited "economies of scale" or "leverage over government2 as reasons to do it. In the private sector we either get referred to the Competition Commission (for the former reason), or prosecuted under bribery laws (for the latter).
Of course Derrick (and you) make the fundamental mistake of thinking you can actually deliver 2,000,000 votes to anyone. A quick re-read of British politics from 1979-1997 should disabuse you of this notion. Many Trade Unionists clearly voted Conservative in that period, and many supported Thatcher's reform of TU law. If that wasn't the case, Labour would not have had to endorse it in order to return to power, eventually, in 1997. And in the current BA dispute, unless you buy into the "Willie is just a liar" argument, then he has 6,000 volunteers from an overwhelmingly unionised workforce to break a strike by another highly unionised bit of the workforce. Derrick can't even deliver one bit of his BA workforce to another, so he isn't delivering 2 million votes to Labour, just £10 million of his members' money. Like I say, in the private sectior we tend to get prosecuted for that kind of thing.
I must say that I think you're delusional if you really believe anyone in Unite cares one iota about BA's cabin crew. I'll put that down to it being late when you posted and due to the comfort of a good bottle of red. Consider the facts, though. This dispute involves 12,000 people, none of whom are being made compulsorily redundant, and none of whom are taking a pay cut. BA has just asked for productivity improvements, and imposed them when they felt negotiations were going nowhere. Now, tell me where most of Unite's workers work. I'm guessing the public sector. That's the public sector which, ex health and international aid, is going to endure a 10% cut in reources in future years. And that's per Alastair Darling's numbers, not George Osbourne's. In staff terms, that equates to anything between 500,000 and 1,000,000 public sector jobs that will be cut over the next 10 years. That's a lot of membership fees at risk. And the nightmare scenario is a Conservative government that uses the cull as an opportunity to break Unions' power in the public sector, which is still very strong. That is Unite's concern. We're already beginning to hear rumbles about redundancies in local authorities, eg 2,000 in Birmingham I think. There was a survey (on the BBC I think), that suggested 10% of all local authority jobs might be at risk.
So, Unite's only concern in the BA dispute is to prevent a strike during the election campaign that risks damaging Labour. I don't agree with you that Labour are going to win the election. Even if they do it is likely to be without overall control of the Commons, and the Lib Dems will not support a government led by Brown. Unite's best hope is for a non-Labour government that can be ousted after one term, or even a shortened term if it results in an unstable coalition or minority government. And a BA strike now would damage Labour, given the '70s style rhetoric being spouted by BASSA.
So, I agree there will be a negotiated settlement, though it will pretty much be on BA's terms and will involve the bulk of BASSA's reps leaving BA so as to prevent a repeat performance in a year or two's time. Unite will support their dismissal privately though, of course, complain bitterly in public. Significantly, such a move would not stop a deal being signed, and there will be no strike threat in support of them.
That's my take as an outsider rather than an inhabitant of the "BA Bubble".