A very interesting comment to Gregor Gall's op-ed piece in the Guardian today. Not something I've seen mentioned on here before:
AnnAthema
18 May 2010, 1:38PM
Just a small point of public record from the court case yesterday worth highlighting; after the result was received by Unite from the scrutineers it was passed to the BASSA branch for dissemination to their members. It was commented in court on how the result was up on notice boards at BA's Crew Report Centre within an hour of it being released to Unite, similar time-frame for text messaging, and the weblink was created by a rep named Marley. Technically speaking, the buck should stop at the Branch Secretary or Chairman's door as the responsible officers.
Therefore, strictly speaking, the errors in passing the information to the membership were those of the officers of the BASSA branch, and NOT Unite. Perhaps a bit more time spent studying TULRA in future for BASSA? They have let their membership down quite dramatically by making simple errors where they should have ensured they were absolutely watertight.
The right to strike is fundamental, but the responsibilities of the Union, or in this case, the BASSA branch, seem to have been somewhat misplaced in this dispute. No-one to blame but themselves, really.
If that is true, then it puts a different slant on the culpability of BASSA in this embarrassing episode. Bit more time in the TULRA books indeed, and a bit less time whooping and hollering over the result, maybe?