There surely can be no excuse for BASSA getting the membership figures wrong again.
What is DH is being paid by the BASSA members to do?, he has not got the excuse anymore that BA are preventing him from collating the number of active members because he is rostered to work.
BASSA members are paying a fortune each year, what do they get for their money?.

@ Leiard ... as I understand it, BASSA pays someone to do the Membership records. That individual has allegedly sub-contracted to the work to someone else.

Who knows who got paid what. Transparency of accounts is not a BASSA forte.

Exactly. CSDs have a duty of care for ALL their crew whilst on duty, regardless of whether individuals were strikers or not. If an incident occurs down-route, CSD can not pick and choose who they decide to support. They have a responsibility to remain impartial at the very least.

Apparently not :ugh:

One could imply that the financial records are equally as inept, of course.
As is the ability to connect a Membership Number with a postal address.

"Is it a database? Is it a cardex? No, it's piles of paper ... :cool:"

I could believe the average Girl Guide unit has better record-keeping.

One assumes that BASSA are complying with the Data Protection Act

http://www.justice.gov.uk/guidance/d...y_business.pdf

Pda-union.org/legal/data-protection.htm

Now please don't start bringing legal arguments into this.
That's apparently a typical under-hand BA trick ...

... as opposed to a legal requirement.

Hmmm ... who is the Registered Holder of the data, or whatever the correct term might be?

So no word from the BASSA leadership.

Have they been silenced by Unite to prevent another cock up or are they trying to conjure up a perfectly rational explanation for this. After all, we were promised "guerilla tactics" 9 months ago.

Is the BASSA membership database debacle the reason for the "URGENT! Update your membership details. So we can contact you in the coming weeks." message that has been prominently displayed on the Uniteba home page for a while?

@ MPM11

This is an organization that seems to have no accountability to its members.

They have an annual income of at least £750,000 and publish no accounts of how this money is used.

My local cricket team has more accountability !

Litebulbs
 

A rep should do both. As the job title suggests, they should "represent". Therefore they need to ascertain the general will of the members who they purport to represent. They then act as facilitators of that view with the employer. Then, following whatever discussions they are mandated to hold and within the bargaining structure agreed with the employer, they report back to their members and give their opinion on the best course of action to take, ie they lead. Only they can perform this task, as only they have access to all the information and nuances picked up from discussions with the employer.

I think the flaw in your original enquiry with respect to BA cabin crew representation is a very simple one: the current branch leadership simply has no mandate to fulfil either (indeed any) role on behalf of members. They decided to suspend all rep elections until the dispute was resolved. Therefore the current reps cannot fufil their obvious role (ie obvious because they are called "representatives"). And let's not forget that they do not actually know who are members, if the issues surrounding the latest ballot (and the first strike ballot) are to be believed. It's hard to be representative when you do not actually know who it is you claim to be representing.

At the moment BA crew have two equally unappealling choices of persons to act on their behalf: the incumbent Union complete with "reps" who refuse to put themselves up for election/deselection by their (dwindling) membership; or a new group (PCCC) who are entirely anonymous to the vast majority of people they wish to represent and ask to be accepted as some kind of act of blind (literally) faith. No wonder BA isn't talking to anyone. With the best will in the world they cannot actually find anyone who they can be sure has any kind of authority to speak on behalf of crew. We know, for instance, that the full time leadership of Unite cannot fulfil this role either, given the various agreements made and then sabotaged by the individual crew branches.

So here's a question for you. Put yourself in the management position at BA. Who would you call to try and resolve this dispute? The branch leadership (not subjected to electoral scrutiny for quite some time, several reps no longer qualified to be such by virtue of terminated employment); PCCC (not sure how BA gets to do this, presumably some kind of MI5 dead letter drop as the "leadership" is known only to each other in the kind or organisational structure so beloved of guerilla organisations); Unite's full time leadership (the people with a general lack of awareness of who actually is in the Union)? Or would you just talk over the heads of the lot of them, engage with staff directly, and not bother with collective bargaining which is clearly not delivering results for either staff or company?

correction
 

leiard - there is an "l"missing, it is
. . . . . . pda-union.org/legal/data-protection.html
and not
. . . . . . pda-union.org/legal/data-protection.htm

"They have an annual income of at least £750,000 and publish no accounts of how this money is used."

For the financially illiterate out there, BASSA do not have to produce accounts providing their data is 'rolled up' into the corporate body that is UNITE, and is a subset of the overall union accounts.

This is exactly how any other company declares its finances, and there is no obligation to provide data cut every which way.

Your local cricket team is an accounting entity but you have no obligation to declare the finances of 'bowlers' and 'fielders' as separate entities.

JayPee
 

As a huge majority of staff will be still employed after this dispute is finished, then if it was me in a managerial role, I would be looking at ways for building the bridges again. I would sit in the CRC with a sign above my head saying "whatever you say to me, will not be used against you in any way, no matter how bad" and engage.

BA has made change, it is here but what needs to be addressed is this fear of a 40% pay reduction and unemployment due to MF in a few years time.

I would offer any and all explanations to those who wanted to know. Actually, I wouldn't get a manager to do it, I would pull in a team of ACAS mediators, who would be fully briefed by Unite and the management on all the details, but just have them in a room to listen to all the concerns. Build up the data and then answer it.

It should be easy, if there is no other agenda.

Discuss!

Part of the problem could be external to BA i,e, society and it's occasional distrust of "managers"

I had a conversation reported to me recently, it took place between two members of crew on airport standby, at an airport where there is little union influence.

Those involved were a fairly recent recruit and a crew member who has been there a number of years.

When the younger crew member commented about being bored, the other suggested she visit the duty managers to see who they are (social call) this met with a total refusal as the younger one wanted nothing to do with any managers

I can't help but wonder how many arrive for employment with this attitude

Unite Accounts

Here http://www.unitetheunion.org/pdf/Sta...rs%20Final.pdf

are the Unite accounts for the year ending 31 Dec 2009. On page 7 you will see one Lizanne Malone was reinbursed £223 for loss of earnings while on Unite business. There is no breakdown of individual sections.

Lightbulbs does your Unite section give its members a breakdown of its accounts?

Incidentally the Unite website has a link to BALPA which it describes as "the professional union for all UK pilots working in the UK".

Regards

That is a great plan Litebulbs. One flaw however. It will be perceived and proclaimed by BASSA as yet another example of union busting, divide & conquer, etc etc.

It would be impossible for Holley & Co to put their spin on the ACAS utterances unless made through themselves. Therefore the chances of them agreeing to
ACAS directly talking to the individual CC members bypassing BASSA would in my view be nil.

I'd also question whether those CC who apparently lack the wherewithal to vote (and there are many despite the ballot number flaws) would have the nouce to understand what they are told or to pose relevant questions.

Sadly, in my view, it wouldn't work.

binsleepin
 

As far as I am aware, no. I pay £120 a year and am happy with what I get for that. If my branch took above what the normal fees were, I might ask. They don't so I haven't.

As far as I know the Unite branch where I work does (it also posts the minutes of meetings for all to see)

The branch of the union I am a member of most certainly does

Mariner9
 

You are probably right, but if 10% took up the chance to talk, then it could be a good thing. This is not a pro management idea, as it would be independant and just looking at concerns, with no threat whether real or perceived, of intimidation or being marked out.

I was also putting myself in a management position, rather than that of a rep, especially a rep at BA.

west lakes
 

Where I work, the members sit across lots of branches. All of our business is carried out the branch structure.