Firefighter, roughneck, surveyor, trainee lawyer and nascent networking specialist Steven Latta blogs for the Firm.

The recent decision by Mrs Justice Cox in favour of British Airways brought a collective sigh of relief for many travellers as the intention to take industrial action by BA cabin crew was blocked.

Many legal commentators are now, however, questioning the validity of the judgement.

For me though, as a trainee lawyer, fairly new to my firm’s Private Client department, my focus on the law has been taken up exclusively in recent weeks in getting up to speed on issues of conveyancing, succession and family law.

However, as someone who has been around the ‘labour market block’ in various, fairly diverse, jobs over the years I can’t help but have an opinion on the proposed industrial action from another perspective.

I spent six years at Scottish Enterprise from the late Nineties. It was apparent that the most important issues facing businesses and, by extension, the economy during this period were the impact of globalisation and of information and communication technologies.

The world was opening up which brought with it increased opportunities but also increased competition.

Established British businesses found themselves operating in a much more competitive market-place. Perhaps, as our economy experienced years of growth, the actual impact of this for many organisations is only now becoming apparent as demand in the economy is reduced and we face a period of relative austerity.

A trawl through the online pages of several newspapers appears to demonstrate little public support for the British Airways staff. Typical comments from readers on web-pages related to the issue state “the strike is the final straw for me”, “I will never entertain the idea of flying with BA again”, “who in their right mind would book ....on a BA flight” and “British Airways, the cabin crew’s favourite airline”.

It appears that even the uncertainty over industrial action is damaging British Airways. The ambition of the Union appears to be entirely Pyrrhic and the warning from recent casualties, including Globespan, is not getting through.

According to ‘The Economist’ it costs an average of £29,900 in basic pay to employ a BA cabin attendant, compared with £20,200 for Easy-Jet, the next best payer among British Airlines (Virgin Atlantic come in at £14,400). As they say in America; ‘you do the math’.

You will notice I don’t use any emotive language such as “need”, “fair” or “fat-cats”; to me the issue is about simple economics. Or, as the above figures would suggest, arithmetic.

Everyone in the legal community in Scotland will know someone who has been affected by the recession with the majority of commercial firms making redundancies or having to impose reduced working weeks. Never pleasant, but, in times of a recession, a fact of life.

My position, having spent time in the Royal Air Force, the offshore oil industry, the public sector and in consultancy before coming to the law, is that if you are unhappy with your lot you do something about it personally, you apply for a new job, get more qualifications or relocate.

From a purely economic perspective all workers are seen as ‘economic actors’ in the labour market, all having a value dictated by, amongst other things, experience, qualifications, age, industry, enterprise and market conditions.

This way of thinking and culture of self-accountability does not sit easily with the unions though. And why should it? If everyone looked after their own affairs they would be out of a job.

It ‘strikes’ me that this is a lose-lose situation for the BA staff. The industrial action is impacting on their employer which will have a knock-on effect on the staff irrespective of the possibility of any short term victory.

Until the next time.

Steven