Litebulbs #782
Ava Hannah on the other thread is posting that she's already told her manager that she'll have to resign soon if staff travel isn't reinstated. So there's your test case. Except it won't be, because we all know Unite/BASSA has no case.
But let's assume there is a case, and it duly goes through the High/Appeal/Supreme Court. Then on to ECoHR if Unite loses. Where the case will be versus the UK government not BA. If they win that, they have to wait for the government to amend UK legislation. Then hope BA don't contest whether the change actually applies to them. And where in the 30,000 cases ECoHR gets this year do you think this will rank in importance and hence prioritising? How long do you think it will take? Won't all affected staff have "done an Ava" by then?
How much will this cost Unite's members, and how will you justify the spending of your members' subs to fight such a pointless case? At what point are you, personally, going to tell the full time leadership that you're not prepared to sanction further subs from members you represent being spent this way?
As I said before, worst case this costs BA £20m if they lose, and keep in mind they'll have got rid of a lot of expensive staff at zero redundancy cost, so the net cost to them is a lot less than £20m. I doubt they care whether Unite takes this case, other than it's diverting internal resource from real work like the Iberia merger, pension scheme changes, etc.
BA's share price is outperforming the market very handily over 12 months (by 35%). Consensus profit forecast isn't moving despite all the hot air from Unite. BA promised cost reductions, they've delivered them, the market likes it. If Unite/BASSA doesn't, well that's just tough I'm afraid. Cabin crew really aren't the only stakeholders in BA. The Iberia/AA deals are likely to be a much bigger contributor to profits/share price than anything Unite might do, well at least at BA. A strike at BAA Heathrow could hit the BA share price, I guess. In short, the investment community has moved on from the BA dispute. If BA has to chuck a bit of money at it because they're deemed to have breached human rights law, so be it. Far cheaper than backing down. I suspect they won't even end up doing that, though.