On Tuesday March 23 2010, the swathes of British Airways cabin crew that went on strike will return to work only to embark on another set of industrial action this coming weekend for another four days.

After the strikes have been carried out, union members will need to ask themselves just what their walkout achieved.

They’ll be going back to work knowing that the changes that the airline has brought in will still be there, just as they were when they took to the picket lines. One only need look at the IAM union strike at Boeing in the fall of 2008 – even after reaching an agreement, the IAM was greeted with the news that the second 787 production line would not be in Everett. Did the IAM achieve what they set out in terms of job security?

Will the Unite union somehow “win” what it claims it can?

Not bloody likely, many would agree.

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The High Court had already thrown out Unite’s claims of employment and contractual breaches with Mr Justice Sir Christopher Holland instead saying that “if the crew [numbers] materially and fairly contribute to the preservation of BA and more importantly for present purposes job security and pay, how can I condemn the less-than-extreme changes as unreasonable?“

From the very moment talks began between British Airways and Unite, the union has been hell-bent on walking out rather than work towards an agreement to execute a cost cutting strategy that would help the loss-making airline get back on the road to profitability.

British Airways already carries fewer passengers than Ryanair and is certain to head toward a bigger than expected full year loss when it reports its earnings in May.

Many union leaders believe that if the airline is pushed over the financial edge, then the Government of the day will step in and rescue it. This is unlikely to happen, if at all. The union is either blind or ignorant of what has happened to British Airways’ oneworld partner, Japan Airlines. The Japanese Government let the airline file for bankruptcy and if the estimated ranges of cost to British Airways are indeed between £20-£35m per day, then the union has only itself to blame when the axe falls on jobs.

That is money British Airways could have used to service its burgeoning pension debt obligations, it could have used it to improve services and invest for the future – instead, British Airways will suffer the discord from customers left stranded venting fury at both management and cabin crew.

Willie Walsh knows that the only way to break the union stranglehold is to take a leaf out of Ryanair’s book: it has to ostracise militant, unionised staff and employ flexible agency staff whose costs are lower, terms of employment less rigid and have zero grounds on which to take strike action in the event of a pay or rostering dispute. That Walsh did nothing in the months building up to Unite’s actions also speaks volumes at the inherently slow pace of realism within the world that British Airways operates in.

Walsh and British Airways could have avoided this strike in a best case scenario, at the very worst, the airline could have been running close to 100% of its schedules if it had flexible staffing in place earlier. British Airways’ business model has already been decimated with the collapse of the premium market and now faces a battle of survival against the very people it employs.

It is these people that British Airways can do without – the time for tough talk has well and truly expired. If Walsh wants to show that he’s the man who turned British Airways around, he needs to act as tough as he speaks and remove the cancerous union staff who clearly have no interest in saving what was once the world’s favourite airline.