EMPLOYEES at British Airways are within their rights to have reservations about proposed changes to their working practices.

But it is difficult to see how staging unofficial strike action is going to help their cause.

The walk-out may have raised the profile of the dispute, but it did nothing to help resolve it.

Both the unions and BA management have to ask themselves why they had to go through all the pain of a wildcat strike before seeking the help of conciliation service Acas to broker an agreement.

Industrial action should only be the last resort of the negotiating process.

The strike was undoubtedly calculated to cause the maximum disruption and inconvenience. That the walk-out took place on the first day of the school holidays, one of the busiest days at Heathrow, was unlikely to be a coincidence.

But the action won the workers no favours. With 80,000 passengers delayed over the weekend and beyond, support for the BA staff was difficult to find.

And the BA management did itself few favours, failing to provide sufficient information for passengers and seemingly having no contingency plans to cope with the situation.

The BA staff who joined the strike have, ironically, put their jobs under even greater threat.

Many of those passengers left stranded at Heathrow will be reluctant to fly with BA again.

And because of the management's poor handling of the crisis, potential future passengers may not have faith in BA's reliability and be tempted to use other airlines.

BA has already lost millions of pounds because of the weekend's upheaval at Heathrow. The financial repercussions to the business in the medium-term could be catastrophic.

There is a lesson in industrial relations to be had from the chaotic scenes at Heathrow's check-in desks over the last few days of the lasting damage caused by strikes.

Both unions and employers should allow negotiations to run their fullest course before industrial action is contemplated.