A strike by British Airways cabin crew planned for Christmas has been declared illegal in a High Court ruling. The court agreed with BA that the cabin crew’s union, Unite, had not correctly balloted its members on the strike action. BA complained that staff in the process of leaving the company had been balloted, breaching industrial relations law.

Isn’t this a technicality? The union need under law to get a majority of those voting within a bargaining unit, and they did – with a huge 90% voting on an equally impressive 80% turnout. Even if some voting were ineligible to strike, the turnout was so high that removing the suggested up to 1000 votes would surely still clearly carry the ballot – especially as you’d have to reduce the size of the overall bargaining unit by those who weren’t eligible (thus lowering the threshold even further for the ballot).