Being in London, had dinner tonight with a fellow who helps my business partner and me out with some of our (soon to be cut back) dealings with UK industrial relations strategies.
We were discussing the confab going on over the current ballot.
He said if he were running BA, being sensitive to the fact that firing everybody who goes out on a possible unprotected strike would be destructive to the employee relations in the extreme for years, go for a middle ground.
Those who go out on uprotected industrial action, after being duly warned at least 3 times by BA in writing ahead of time, are terminated as of midnight on the day they go out on strike.
However, they can immediately reapply for their job, on the terms and conditions of the offer that was made (and being signed up to by many non-union cabin crew at present), however with a new hire date, putting them at the bottom of the seniority pile. They would be new hires on the WW contract, that they can sign themselves (presumably not union members until they rejoin later).
So no permanent loss of job in the end (unless BA decide not to hire back a handful of the worst of the worst), they have jobs under the new contract the union was rejecting and life goes on. There is a consquence to having gone out on an uprotected strike, but not permanent loss of job.
My friend and I were talking over what this does to their union membership, so not sure if being dismissed ends their union membership automatically--if not, then signing the contract on their own might be problematic if they are still in the union, even though not employed by BA.
But if their union membership ends at midnight as their job does, that would be a big dent in the BASSA union dues for a while until the dismissed cabin crew had gone through the rehiring process and were back on salary.
There's more than one way to skin a cat, but BA have been very creative so far in not going TOO far in punishing people, other than removing ST.
This idea my friend had was an interim step between permanent dismissal for unprotected IA and no consequence at all. But I don't know if once lawyered by BA's legal eagles, it would fly (no pun intended!)
