Ballots and membership
Unite just cannot get it right. In their first ballot held in December 2009, 12,780 ballot papers issued but this ballot was subsequently declared invalid by the High Court following a challenge by BA.
The second (valid) ballot in February 2010 had 11,691 ballot papers sent out.
The third ballot in December 2010 had 10,220 ballot papers sent out. This was also wrong so a fourth ballot for 9,824 members will be done soon!
In the 13 months between the second and fourth ballots, Unite's membership has fallen by 1,867. But bearing in mind that natural wastage accounts for about 25 cabin crew members a month, and that most of these would have been union members, it looks as if roughly 1,560 have resigned from the union. This is a significant percentage of total membership but not as much as some people thought it would (or should) be.