Just to clarify that Willie Walsh (as CEO of IAG) will not be involved in this. Industrial relations are the responsibility of the operating airline CEOs.
Alex Cruz is now CEO of BA (who is an unknown quantity as far as response to industrial action at BA is concerned) will be leading this.
BA's response to the strike announcement on Friday (making it absolutely clear the strike would fail) actually sounded far more combative than when BASSA was intent on driving the airline off a cliff.
MF do have legitimate concerns around some of the rostering (witness the very different response to other workgroups in the airline to the BASSA dispute of 2009) and hopefully this is resolved without industrial action.