There were meetings between BA and Unite that despite hope were obviously not effective, with a BA spokesman stating on the 3rd September: "The talks last week were very constructive and we look forward to making further progress later this month." Had they had impartial, trained external mediators present could the outcome have been different? If they had recognised unrest in an employee engagement survey could they have introduced mediators at an even earlier stage to ensure reconciliation? Here at the TCM Group we think the answer is yes because we resolve 90% of disputes and achieve long lasting reconciliation through mediation.

With the CIPD acknowledging that 350 days of management time a year is wasted on trying to resolve disputes, it is obvious something needs to be done to ease the pressure on HR and speed up the dispute to reconciliation time in a more efficient way than browsing the Acas website can facilitate. The government, the courts and more and more private and public sector organisations are using mediation and even training managers internally to be able to mediate, because it effectively avoids the high financial and human costs incurred through litigation, investigations or compromise agreements.

Organisations such as BT Retail, HSBC, Arcadia Group and Tfl are just some of those championing mediation. As for BA you can’t help but feel sorry that they did not foresee or prevent this now very legal argument. Something tells me Willie Walsh’s Christmas wasn’t that merry this year.