Legal niceties
The ballot held in November 2009 was judged to have not conformed with the legal requirements.Key ponts were that BASSA had balloted people who would not be employed by BA when strikes would be called.Moreover, the chairperson of BASSA had given advice to members that those leaving the company could vote in the ballot.Thus Unite could not be said to have taken all reasonable precautions to ensure that only those elegible to vote did so. The court judgement was not subject to appeal and hence Unite had to go through the whole ballot process again.
Following the second ballot and initial walkout, BA sought an injunction on further industrial action on the basis that Unite had failed to notify members of the number of spoilt papers in the ballot. The high court upheld this view and granted an injunction.Unite appealed and won.
Fast forward to the current ballot. If BA could demonstrate that Unite has balloted people who are no longer in the union and that these folk have voted (derivable from the total votes cast), then we may be back to November 2009 again. Even if Unite have enclosed a note stating that only current members can vote, if their membership lists are out of synch by more than a small percentage, the courts may determine that they have done insufficient,particularly if BA have provided details of who is paying via pay deduction.
So if you want to scupper the strike,are no longer in the union, but have received a ballot paper, vote No and return it. Very embarrassing for Unite if the No vote is fractionally larger than the Yes vote, but they know that the number of votes is greater than the actual membership.