Originally Posted by JonWB

Agreed. Last chance saloon for calling off the strikes was on Sunday, before BA put in all the schedule changes. Willie made this clear as he spent Sunday at the TUC with ACAS.

Willie just gets good PR by 'trying' to avert the strike up to the deadline. Also interesting that it is Tony Woodley and not Len McCluskey he is talking to.

On pprune someone said that BASSA alone had the decision on calling strikes (and calling them off), UNITE could not overrule them. This was a result of UNITE overuling a previous BASSA strike.

Let's face it, Willie has played a blinder. I fully expect that BA could have run much more of a schedule on Saturday for the first set of strikes, but the best strategy is this:

(1) Announce a schedule.
(2) Increase it due to more cabin crew being available.
(3) Increase it again in the second set of strike dates due to more cabin crew being available.
(4) Increase it again before the second set of strike dates due to more cabin crew available.

I suspect BA knows the number for (4) now, but has built up lots of contingency to ensure it hits the numbers.

Plus with 1,000 volunteers, if support for the strike is weak in the first set of dates, BA can instigate a full lockout of striking staff from those 4 days.