approximately 4,900 crew went on strike and of those 600 returned to work
I think this was a snapshot figure, i.e. it was correct at the time of speaking. In reality some c5700 cabin crew had their staff travel removed for striking, and in the last two ballots the numbers voting for further strikes have been constant at c 5700. This clearly indicates that should further strike actions occur BA can expect a minimum of approximately 5700 staff to actively strike. There may be more, who feel that as the strike was voted for, the democratic thing to do would be to follow this wishes of their colleagues and also strike. Various figures are bandied around as to the exact strength of current BA cabin crew, but for arguments sake lets take a low figure of 13,000. This would indicate that we can expect to see a 44% participation rate - perhaps more. This actually reveals little, if on day one ALL cabin crew that are rostered happen to be strikers then ON THAT DAY the support would be 100%.
The daily figure is far more important than the total, a well supported strike on the first day would scare the heck out of BA management and it is this vague hope that BASSA cling to. In reality these things tend to go with the average, plus or minus a small deviation and BA will have planned carefully for that, BASSA are probably not organised and forward thinking. Certainly recent history shows a particular lack of forward thinking on their behalf, I expect no different this time around. BASSA's thinking is all tactical and not strategic.