According to an industrial relations lawyer quoted by the Financial Times on 18 December, "wildcat strikes are now possible", in response to a court's decision to ban the official strike by BA workers from 22 December.
The labour movement should give full support to the BA workers in defying the ban.
The workers, members of Unite, had voted by a 92.5% majority, on an 80% turnout to strike against job cuts.
The ostensible reason for the court ruling was that some workers who had already agreed to take voluntary redundancy had taken part in the ballot.
But it is impossible that exclusion of wrongly-included votes could have changed the workers' overwhelming decision to strike. And the judge made it clear that her motive in banning the strike had much more to do with its probable large impact than any irregularities in balloting.
"A strike of this kind over 12 days of Christmas is in my view fundamentally more damaging to BA and the wider public than a strike taking place at almost any other time", said the judge.
But what does that have to do with it? Obviously the workers wanted the strike to have a large impact. That is why they voted for it. The supposed inclusion of voluntarily-redundant workers was the judge's "good reason" for banning the strike, but the real reason seems to have been that it would have a large impact.
The law which says that strikes have to be preceded by ballots - with seven days' notice to the boss, and then another seven days after the ballot result before any action - is supposed to be a measure for democracy. It is the opposite.
Even if the boss does not go to court for an injunction, the law imposes delay on the workers. And the BA case shows that in any strike likely to have a large impact, and where any large number of workers are balloted, the boss is almost always likely to be able to find a judge who will see some minor "irregularity" as a good reason for banning the strike.
If BA workers take no action, then the bosses have an extra month, at least, to impose "accomplished facts" on them, to demoralise them, and to push for more redundancies. They should act, and every labour movement activist and democrat should back them.