Published Friday, 25 November 2011
Taxpayers are funding trade unions in the UK to the tune of £113 million a year through direct grants and paid time off for union reps in public sector organizations, the TaxPayers' Alliance (TPA) pressure group said.
The group obtained figures from public sector employers throughout the UK for the report.
Under legislation dating back to 1975, union representatives are allowed paid time off for duties such as negotiating terms and conditions, helping union members with disciplinary procedures and discussing issues such as redundancies.
The paid time off allocated to Belfast Trust workers is the equivalent to the hours of 16 full-time staff.
The TPA found that paid time off in the UK amounted to the equivalent of 2,840 full-time staff in 2010/11.
The group estimated the cost to taxpayers of this time off at £80 million, or 0.14% of the annual public sector pay bill.
If public sector organisations cut it to the 0.04% seen in the private sector, it would be the equivalent of making an additional 2,028 full-time workers available for front-line posts, said the group.
Additionally, public sector organisations paid almost £33 million directly to trade unions in 2010/11 - the bulk of it made up of the Department for Business's £21.4 million support for the TUC's Union Learning Fund, which provides skills training.
TPA director Matthew Sinclair said: "Taxpayers shouldn't be funding staff to work for trade unions, providing them with a huge activist base to support strikes and freeing up resources for political campaigns.
"Paying for the salaries of full-time union staff and the many grants the unions receive is yet another burden on hard-pressed families, diverting money they expect to be spent on frontline services.
"The Government need to take action and end this scandalous subsidy for unions disrupting services in a vain attempt to stop necessary restraint in public spending."
The TPA's figures suggested that the organisation with the highest number of staff working on trade union activities was the Department for Work and Pensions, with 308 full-time equivalents, followed by HM Revenue & Customs with 181.
The report named Birmingham City Council as the local authority with the highest number of full-time equivalent staff working on trade union activities and duties, with nearly 62 followed by Coventry with 29.