Trade Union Reform (Civil Service) — House of Commons, 2015-03-10
Topic: Labor
Francis Maude (Conservative, Centre-right): With permission, Mr Speaker, I would like to make a statement on trade unions in the civil service Trade unions can play an important role in the modern workplace. Some important reforms implemented under the coalition Government, such as changes to the civil service compensation scheme and public sector pensions, were the subject of extended and constructive discussions with a range of public sector trade unions, and I am grateful to union leaders for the forward-looking and thoughtful way in which they have engaged with the need for reform. However, further reforms were needed to how the unions operated within the civil service, and I want to update the House on progress Facility time describes the arrangement whereby union officials and representatives have paid time off for trade union duties and activities. Properly controlled and monitored, this can assist with the rapid resolution of local disputes and grievances, but five years ago in the civil service, it was neither controlled nor monitored. We found that thousands of civil servants were paid, sometimes including travel costs and expenses, to attend union conferences. We found that more than 200 civil servants were being paid to work full time on union business. Several had been promoted, one of them twice, without ever doing the job for which they were employed The total cost to taxpayers of trade union facility time taken by these officials and the thousands of other part-time representatives was a staggering £36 million a year. Unacceptable at any time, this was particularly intolerable at a time when the coalition Government were making difficult decisions to get the country’s finances back on track. Facility time in the civil service is now rigorously monitored and reported. Now, unless specifically authorised by a Minister, all trade union representatives must spend at least half their time doing the civil service job for which they were employed. Gone is the automatic paid time off to attend seaside union conferences Today I can tell the House that the cost of trade union facility time has dropped by nearly 75%, from £36 million in 2011 to just over £10 million now, saving taxpayers £26 million a year. The cost has fallen from 0.26% of pay bill to just 0.07% for the latest rolling year to date—well below the benchmark we set of 0.1%. I can also reveal that the number of full-time trade union officials on the public’s payroll has fallen from 200 in 2011 to just eight today. With the civil service now over one fifth smaller—like for like—than it was in 2010, I expect the overall number of representatives to continue to fall over the coming years Check-off is the practice where the employer collects trade union subscriptions from payroll on behalf of the union, and decisions on whether this should continue are delegated to individual Departments. The civil service management code requires Departments to recover the cost of check-off from the unions, which only two Departments were doing, so the head of the civil service has written to permanent secretaries of Departments where check-off remains to remind them of this obligation. So far, eight Departments have served notice to the trade unions that they intend to remove check-off: Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, the Ministry of Defence, the Home Office, the Department for Communities and Local Government, the Department for International Development, the Department for Work and Pensions, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Others have started the consultation process to allow this to happen. I believe that this change will enable unions to build a much more direct relationship with their members, without the need for the relationship to be intermediated by the employer Taken together, these reforms have made a considerable contribution to modernising Departments’ relationships with their trade unions—reforms that were long overdue—and I commend the statement to the House.