What may have escaped people's notice is that the 1997 incident involved the predecessor to the current branch secretary. Now you would have thought that given the Certification Officer's comments that a new branch secretary would have gone overboard to ensure that the branch financial matters were sorted out. I have no way of knowing if any attempt was made in that respect, but it does seem somewhat ironic that we are seeing the same complaint raised again. One can only surmise that BASSA members don't care what happens to the cash that their branch extracts from them. Which I find odd given the volume of wailing about how cabin crew get such a rough deal from BA with regards to pay etc.
What is more extraordinary is that the TGWU did not see fit to try and sort this out. Bear in mind that the current General Secretary of Unite is a TGWU man. One wonders if the apparent lack of enforcement of union procedures is yet another example of double standards within Unite.