Well, it would appear that I've stirred a hornet's nest here. The regime are on to me and my inconvenient questions seem to have come to Dear Leader's attention. I hope I don't get named and shamed and bannished to the civilised world for my treachery.
I'm just waiting for his forum post accusing me of working for the "union busters"....zzzzzzzzzzz
So while I reluctantly take on this whistleblower's roll what else can we find out? From the certification officer's website the last Unite accounts
here show that BASSA officers have indeed taken very little from Unite's Executive Account Expense's which state;
Members of the Joint Executive Council are reimbursed for any expenditure incurred by them in the performance of their duties on behalf of the Union. They are also reimbursed for the loss of earning whilst on Union business.
With such low claims the BASSA officers either do very little work for the executive council or have an income stream elsewhere from the branch itself;
Certain members of the Joint Executive Council receive Delegation allowances and payments in their role as branch officers.
The accounts don't show these as itemised amounts. So with the BASSA chair living in LA who funds her flights back to the UK for "union business"? Does BA pay for her flights or does the branch? How about all the conferences and delegations they go on- where is the money for that? Bedfont Fun Park, bouncy castles, face painting for the kids- where's the funding coming from?Do reps ever need to stay in hotels, buy lunch/dinner etc?
Without verifiable facts I'm not for one minute suggesting that anything improper is going on but I'm suspicious with what I'm uncovering. By their estimates (pre-IA) BASSA had around 10,000 members each contributing £15 per month. That's an income of £150k per month or £1.8 million a year. I don't think it's healthy for the branch secretary to have such free reign with so much money nor do I think it's a good idea for the rest of the committee to be on
his payroll- which is what this amounts to.
Basic union politics have always been to get people on your payroll so they start to think like you do- interests are then aligned, so who would want to stop the gravy train? Mugabe, Gaddafi, Mubarrak, Ben Ali, Sadaam Hussein used similar tactics to ensure survival and continued "groupthink". Not that I'm comparing the BASSA branch to these despots but I'm alarmed that the whole BASSA rep community is allowing this dispute to go on.
Unite don't seem to be overseeing these going ons either. I hope my suspicions are proved unfounded, I really do.
HiFlyer14 the footnotes on page 24 of their accounts say that "BAeSSA Staff Association" transferred to AEEU on 30th Sept 2000. AEEU appears to be the "Amalgamated Engineering and Electrical Union" who have a presence at BAe Systems (previously British Aerospace) so I don't think it's anything to do with BASSA2000 at BA.
And £3m to the Labour party and £3.7m to the TUC seems to be more member's money poorly spent.
I'm beginning to see how a Liverpool dock worker has got to the top.
