Therefore, if a ballot is extended to "others" (i.e. those who it is not reasonable to believe will be induced to take part in industrial action) it does not meet the requirement of s. 227 and, therefore, the industrial action is not treated as having the support of a ballot.

What do you expect the Judge to do? Ignore the mandatory bit of law which Unite breached, and strike down the ballot when it did exactly what the Act required??? [/QUOTE]

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If the union had excluded the 10% who were ex-employees and ineligible to vote it would have changed the result from 90% yes to 89% yes.

To invalidate a ballot on that basis is dumb, undemocratic and entirely lacking common sense.

I'm glad the union got screwed by the judge (because I'm booked on BA for 22Dec) but that doesn't make it right or fair.

On the other hand, the question that elicited the yes vote was a con. It was designed to get the maximum vote to strike by being couched in such harmless or uncatastrophic terms. But the judge lacked the courage or intellectual capacity to address that bias.