Taxpayers spend millions paying for trade union activities - The Telegraph

drc

From the Telegraph;

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/7981717/Taxpayers-spend-millions-paying-for-trade-union-activities.html

Taxpayers spend millions paying for trade union activities

Millions of pounds of taxpayers' money is being used by public bodies to pay the salaries of trade union officials, an investigation by The Sunday Telegraph has found.

By Jasper Copping and Edward Malnick
Published: 9:00PM BST 04 Sep 2010

The BBC building in White City, London. The BBC has five employees on payroll who work full-time as national officials in two unions. Photo: EDDIE MULHOLLAND


Local authorities across the country are allowing hundreds of their employees to devote all or part of their working week to union, rather than council, duties - while their salaries are paid from public funds.

A survey of 77 English councils by this newspaper found that they spent around £11 million last year on the salaries of individuals who were employed by the councils, but in fact spent their time on trade union duties.

Some of the dedicated union workers were on salaries in excess of £50,000 a year.

The system, known as "facility time", also operates in Whitehall departments, the NHS, the BBC and other areas of the public sector - meaning that the true extent to which taxpayers subsidise trade unions is actually far higher.

The disclosures come at a time when the public sector unions are preparing to fight spending cuts and threatening strike action.
Critics argue that the payments are "sucking money away from vital services" while freeing up union funds to be used for campaigning.
The Town Hall payments are made under local agreements struck between each council and the unions that are represented among its workforce.

In some cases, council officials who are also union representatives are paid by the council to work full time for the union.
In other cases, councils allow members of their staff to spend a proportion of their working week on union matters, while continuing to pay their full salaries from council funds.

Among the findings of the survey were that:
– A full-time representative of the Unison union is paid £52,000 a year by Enfield council, while a full-time GMB official at Tower Hamlets is paid £58,106 a year by the council.
– Coventry said that it had the equivalent of 20.8 employees working full time for their union, including in schools. Their total salaries, paid by the council, were around £500,000.
– In Manchester, 14 full-time trade conveners are employed by the council at a cost to taxpayers of £356,554.
– In Leeds, £357,054 of public money is spent on the salaries of 16 union officials.
– Cumbria council spends £389,684 on the salaries of employees who work full time for four unions: the GMB, Unison, NUT and the FBU.
– Even relatively small councils support a number of union workers. Central Bedfordshire has a budget of £117,000 for trade union representatives, including three full-timers.

The BBC could not say how much time its staff spent on union activities, but said it had five employees on its payroll who in fact work full-time as national officials in two unions, BECTU and the National Union of Journalists.

Councils and unions insist that the arrangements are good value for taxpayers as they ensure that industrial relations remain cordial.
The role of the union workers on the public payroll include representing their members' interests in staff consultations and and in any disputes with management, including discrimination claims and disciplinary actions.

However, Andrew Griffiths, the Conservative MP for Burton and Uttoxeter, said: "Councils across the country are taking difficult decisions about staffing and funding in order to protect front line services, so it is outrageous that council taxpayers are being forced to fund the activities of the union barons.

"The trade unions are sucking money away from vital services while at the same time planning to spend millions on politically-motivated campaigns against the spending cuts."

Matthew Sinclair, director of the TaxPayers' Alliance, added: "Trade unions are lining up to fight vital cuts in public spending and threatening strikes that could cause massive disruption for ordinary families.

"If big, rich, public sector unions are going to take an active political role, there is no way they should be getting taxpayers' money."
But Dave Prentis, general secretary of Unison, the UK's largest public sector union, said: "There are more than six million public sector workers and all these staff have the right to be represented.
"If trade union stewards are going to represent staff properly, they need time away from their usual jobs to do it.

"Public services are facing savage cutbacks and workers have a right to have their voices heard and rightly expect their union reps to be there to help them when they need them most.

"Far from causing industrial strife, paid facility time has contributed to the lowest levels of strikes on record. In short – trade union facility time makes good business sense."

A spokesman for the Local Government Association, which represents councils, said: "The law says that employers have to give staff reasonable time for union duties. It helps ensure good industrial relations."

lynzpower

A spokesman for the Local Government Association, which represents councils, said: "The law says that employers have to give staff reasonable time for union duties. It helps ensure good industrial relations."

You have to protect workers rights or they have the right to withdraw their labour. In my time in frontline TU duties the union staff ( one was part time mornings employed by council. all union work done in the pms) and talked us out of a lot of strikes when the employer wanted to do things like change our contracts, remove holiday, remove toil and a whole lot of other contractual basics.

harz99

Nothing new here.

In my time as a London Busman, we had employees (mostly drivers and conductors) who were stood down permanently from their normal duties, although still on the books as being in their normal job, and performed Trade Union roles for their colleagues permanently.

Other local reps were stood down with pay on each weekly payday for similar reasons.

Full time Trade Union officials were always employed and paid for by the Union concerned.

I suspect the journalism is getting confused between full time Trade Union officials, and those employees stood down with pay for Union purposes - not the same thing.

StevieJ

More divide and conquer, the unions are pretty much neutered as it is, now in for the kill.

ILW

Why are they not paid from union subs?

harz99

ILW wrote: »

Why are they not paid from union subs?

Post #2 answers that one.

ILW

harz99 wrote: »

Post #2 answers that one.

But it is taxpayers money, I cannot see what right they have to hand it to employees who are not doing their job.

Generali

There is no way that taxpayers should be paying trade union officials. You have a legal right to freedom of assembly and to withdraw your labour and so on. That doesn't mean that taxpayers need to actively spend money on subsidising those rights.

drc

Aren't trade unions basically redundant in this day and age where there is so much protection in law for the worker anyway?

These socialist monoliths are a remnant of a bygone age. I don't see why the taxpayer should be paying Bob Crow and his ilk to go on strike every year.

StevieJ

drc wrote: »

Aren't trade unions basically redundant in this day and age where there is so much protection in law for the worker anyway?

These socialist monoliths are a remnant of a bygone age. I don't see why the taxpayer should be paying Bob Crow and his ilk to go on strike every year.

Interesting that on another thread the discussion is about how hard done to the modern generation is.

lynzpower

drc wrote: »

Aren't trade unions basically redundant in this day and age where there is so much protection in law for the worker anyway?

These socialist monoliths are a remnant of a bygone age. I don't see why the taxpayer should be paying Bob Crow and his ilk to go on strike every year.

What are you on about!

Constant privatisation of state machinery ( from care workers to bin men to NHS staff and beyond) so the private company takes over the contracts slashing contractual rights wherever they can. Of course we need trade unions to negotiate this. ( could you imagine each and every worker needing legal advice from thier own seperate helpline, how would this be co-ordinated?) the point of the TU is to ensure that EMployers meet the law. Not that the law isnt there to protect them, but to ensure that the work of employers is LEGAL.

Bullying and discrimination against staff members, gender, sexuality, race and disability is RIFE!

Didnt you know that when you strike as a worker you dont get paid.

i think your knowledge of trade unionism is shallow at best and I hope for your sake you dont get caught up in a labour dispute without trade union support.