British Airlines Stewards and Stewardesses Association

BASSA
Full name British Airlines Stewards and Stewardesses Association
Members c. 7,000
Affiliation Unite the Union
Trades Union Congress
Key people Chairperson: Sean Beatty
Office location Harlington, London
Country United Kingdom
Website bassa.co.uk

The British Airlines Stewards and Stewardesses Association (BASSA) is a branch of the British trade union Unite. It was originally formed exclusively for British Airways (BA) cabin crew, but other small branches exist representing air stewards and stewardesses at other airlines.[1]

BASSA Is headquartered at the Unite offices in Harlington, London, and also has a support office at Heathrow Airport. It provides year-round support, a secure website service for its members and a 24-hour emergency number for operational issues.

Originally part of the Transport and General Workers' Union (TGWU), BASSA is now part of Unite. Membership has fallen from a high point of over 11,000 in 2009 to c. 7000 due to generous voluntary redundancy having been issued to members and an increasing amount of non-unionised crew.

Today , membership is believed to be less than 7000 based on the 8,907 members stated as eligible to vote in its 2014 leadership ballot, although record keeping is poor (see lack of verifiable accounts).

For the time being, BASSA retains its position as one of the larger branches of any union within the UK. Unite represents British Airways' fast-growing new entrant Mixed Fleet employees, limiting the scope for increasing BASSA membership in future, because its constituent Worldwide and Eurofleets have not been able to recruit new crew since 2008.[2]

The current chairperson is Sean Beatty, a BA Cabin Services Director. He was elected in May 2014 with 14% of BASSA's 8,907 membership voting for him on a turnout of 28.5%.[3]

In February 2017 a BASSA member was granted the right by the Trades Union Certification Officer to inspect the union's accounts after three years campaigning for transparency of how members' subscriptions were spent. Between 2008 and 2013, of a total expenditure of £524,046, just £106 was accounted for, as postage (the remainder was recorded as "sundries").[4] Following an independent investigation the government appointed Employment Appeal Tribunal Certification Officer found no malpractice or discrepancies within BASSA's accounting procedures. The monies marked as sundries were mainly stand-down payments made to union representatives when undertaking Union business. The individual claims for stand down allowances by and remittances to officials were necessary for explaining the transactions of payments to them of substantial sums of money and were 'accounting records'.

See also

References

  1. ↑ "TomAirBASSA". Unite the Union. Retrieved 2009-12-14.
  2. ↑ "BASSA About Us Membership Numbers". Unite the Union. Archived from the original on 2010-10-19. Retrieved 2010-08-07.
  3. ↑ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 4 May 2014. Retrieved 2014-05-04.
  4. ↑ "TUC news". Private Eye. London: Pressdram Ltd. 7 April 2017.


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