BAShareholder,
It IS a separate issue in terms of the staff groups and items under dispute but to pretend for a moment that Unite aren't using one group's dispute in an attempt to leverage the endgame of the CC dispute is, I'd argue, hard to suggest. The higher union politics are, at least to me, clear to see here and it wouldn't be exactly overly cynical to suggest Unite have held on to the announcement of the ground crew ballot to coincide with the termination of negotiations with the airline over CC terms and conditions in the hope that the attack on more than one front will cause a capitulation or, at the very least, a retreat of sorts.
As for the risible notion doing the rounds in some areas that the trial of a BA worker who volunteered for crew duties is in some way a suggestion that BA's methodology is flawed, well, it's just that. Risible.
Disclosure isn't issued by BA so, even had the chap made it into the air, the issue of the airside pass would've been the responsibility of the government agency.
For BASSA to try and peddle it as a justification for only extant cabin crew being safe enough for passengers to fly with is up to the usual high standards of their propaganda. At the risk of being pessimistic, it's not beyond any great realms of possibility that there are already sympathetic individuals holding airside passes, be they air or ground crew of any persuasion.