Staffordshire Council slashes sickness absence

The Municipal Journal reports(£) on some good progress made by Conservative-run Staffordshire County Council in reducing sickness absence by 8%. That amounts to 9,000 fewer sick days a year.

The new policy means the council’s absence rate is an average of 7.68 days per employee, the same as for the private sector. It estimates the fewer sick days are equivalent to 36 full-time employees or £540,000 worth of productivity.

The new policy was launched last February, with every tier of management receiving monthly absence reports for their teams. A pilot physiotherapy service was also established for staff with musculoskeletal conditions.

Cllr Ian Parry, Cabinet Member for Finance and Transformation, said:

New guidance on Town Hall Pilgrims

Many councils, including Conservatives ones, that are increasing the Council Tax this year claim hey have "no alternative" that they "have done all they can" to find savings. Yet often the same councils are continuing to use Council Taxpayers money to fund the salaries of trade union officials. Harrow Council, for example, increased spending in this area last year to £230,000.

The Department for Communities and Local Government have gone further then before in issuing new guidance to end this abuse.

The summary is as follows:

An army of state funded union officials are still in place

The Taxpayers Alliance has published research comparing the amount of taxpayer's money spent funding trade union officials for 2010/11 and 2011/12. The total cost is steady at £113 million. In one sense the situation has become even more outrageous as the proportion of state funded union officials in the public sector has risen:

While total public sector employment fell by 6.5 per cent from 2011 Q2 to 2012 Q2,1the number of full-time equivalent staff working on union duties in bodies which provided data in both years declined from 3,065 to 2,977. That is a fall of less than three per cent which suggests the proportion of public sector staff working for trade unions may be rising.

For the notional public sector employers of these 3,041 union reps there is responsibility without power. They pay the wages but seldom make any check on how the union officials spend their time - the union officials are answerable to their unions rather than their employers. We can all guess what the priority is during an election campaign.

Birmingham City Council has the equivalent of 70 full time union officials with their salaries paid by the Council Taxpayer. That was an increase from 62 on the previous year and is the most of any council in the country. Labour took control of the city in May. Frankly is it any surprise when they have such an advantage given to them in terms of campaigning resources compared to the Conservatives who rely on volunteers?

North Lincolnshire Council scraps funding for union reps

Congratulations to Conservative-run North Lincolnshire Council which is ending its funding for the trade unions. They will cease paying salaries for union officials or providing free office space and thus save the Council Taxpayer £50,000. Instead they are boosting their apprenticeships programme.

The council leader Cllr Liz Redfern, says:

"We have an ambitious plan to deliver more apprenticeships for young people locally.

"By removing taxpayers' money from funding trade union posts, we will be able to create 10 new apprenticeship posts.

"I know many residents struggle to reconcile that taxpayers' money is spent on payments to trade unions, especially when they supply millions of pounds to fund some political parties.

"Unions clearly pay an important role in representing their members.

"However, given that we have historically only subsidised two out of the 10 unions, there is also an issue of fairness.

"We of course remain committed to working with the unions in the interests of their members."

Pickles says unions shouldn't just pay for their own staff but also for collecting their subs

Speaking to a Freedom Association fringe meeting during the Conservative Conference in Birmingham, the Communities and Local Government Secretary Eric Pickles said:

"I am delighted to announce today in relatively short time we will be offering advice to local authorities both in terms of trade union time and check-off. I want to retain the independence of trades unions and therefore it is massively important that they pay for things themselves."

This is most welcome. It is not just the abuse of taxpayer funded union officials but also the provision of free office space belonging to the taxpayer and the state collecting union subs via the payroll.

The former Defence Secretary Liam Fox said at the same meeting:

At the Ministry of Defence in our first year of government, 2010-2011, we had to make some very difficult and painful decisions because of the financial catastrophe left behind by Labour - both in the Department and in the country more generally.  Allowances were reviewed, spending programmes cut back and both military and civilian numbers were sadly reduced. 

Yet in the same year, in this one department, 423 civil servants carried out what they called "trade union responsibilities" at a cost to the taxpayer, and the MoD budget, of £3.9 million. This is an absolute disgrace. That money could have been spent on improving service accommodation or allowances or manpower. It was instead spent on trade union officials who – and wait for this - unbelievably have the right to e-mail every single person involved in the MoD. My own Special Advisers and my own Private Office were receiving e-mails from the unions telling us how wicked our own policies were and why they should be resisted.

Pilgrims face having to work for a living with plan to slash union "facility time"

The Taxpayers Alliance have estimated £113 million of taxpayers' money is paid to trade unions each year.  This is mainly in the form of thousands of staff being paid to do various jobs in the public sector but, in fact, working as union reps. The Cabinet Office has today published some mild proposals to curtail this extraordinary abuse of public money. My understanding is that the Department for Communities and Local Government will follow up with equivalent proposals for local government.

Reading the Cabinet Office proposals, it becomes apparent that  current records of "trade union facility time" are incomplete. So the Taxpayers Alliance disclosure, via Freedom of Information requests, of what is officially logged, is sure to be an under-estimate. One department admitted that “no formal allocations [had been] made or central records kept” of the amount of time spent by representatives on some union activity, while another confessed that “no central monitoring takes place”.

Guido Fawkes has seen a briefing with some of the most scandalous examples.  "A prison service official who worked 100% on trade union work was “promoted twice whilst in their trade union role, up to Grade 7 level” which can confer a salary of up to £61,038."  Also we learn that: "In one department TU officials make up 4% of the overall workforce or 1 in 25 people."

Councillors with union financial interests will be excluded from voting on pilgrim pay

More good news for transparency in our Town Halls. The Department for Communities and Local Government is issuing new rules, which come into effect from 1 July, making a legal requirement for councillors to declare payments and payments in kind from trade unions. Failure to do so will potentially be a criminal offence.

If a councillor has a financial interest in a company which is seeking planning permission, or a licensing application or putting in a tender, then they are not allowed to vote. It follows that if they have a financial benefit from a trade union then they have a conflict of interest in deciding if their council should give that union financial support. A prejudicial interest would not only cover being employed by a trade union but also having a trade union pay for the councillor election campaigning.

Francis Maude will shortly be publishing a policy paper proposing to scale back so-called ‘facility time’ in the Civil Service back to private sector levels – rather than gold-plating legal requirements. The Department for Communities and Local Government will follow through in due course with guidance to councils, giving them legal assurance and practical help on how they can review and cut back both facility time and the provision of subsidies like free office facilities.

Boris: Government "not moving fast enough" on strike ballots minimum threshold

A key objective for Boris Johnson's second term as Mayor of London must be breaking the stranghold of the union militants over the tube network in London.

At a recent Mayor's Question Time session with the London Assembly he indicated his impatience at the delay of the Government to bring in a reform that would help:

Tony Arbour (AM): In the light of Londoners’ recent endorsement of your policies, will you redouble your efforts to persuade the Government to introduce legislation to ensure that a strike ballot requires 50% + 1 of eligible voters to support it in order for any subsequent strike to be valid?

Boris Johnson (Mayor of London):  Yes, Tony, I will continue to press this case. I have to say that it is not something that the Government, I think, is moving fast enough on, but it is a powerful case.

Tony Arbour (AM):  Do you not think that your hand has been very considerably strengthened by your victory when this was clearly one of the issues in London, that when you go to Ministers, particularly the Conservative Members of the Coalition, you will be able to say to them that you speak with the support of more than 1 million voters in London, who do expect Conservatives to keep their promises?

Councils cutting subsidies for teaching unions by up to 50%

An interesting survey from the Times Educational Supplement shows that some councils are cutting back on their subsidies to the teaching unions for "facility time" by up to 50%. This is the arrangement where staff have their salary paid by the Council Taxpayer even when they are working as full time union officials.

The academies expansion has prompted council's education departments to renegotiate as more money goes direct to schools rather than siphoned off on bureaucracy.

The TES report says:

Prime Minister David Cameron has publicly argued that "the current level of public subsidy to the trade unions cannot be sustained, either morally or economically".

New research by TES has revealed that local authorities spent more than £8.5 million on facility time for the education unions in 2011-12. But many of the 90 local authorities who responded, out of a total of 152, revealed significant cuts to their facility time budgets.

Rotherham has, for example, cut its funding by almost half, from £112,000 in 2010-11 to £57,000 the following year. Oldham Council cut its facility time budget by £23,000 in the same period, amounting to a 29 per cent reduction. Other authorities reporting considerable cuts
included Buckinghamshire (15 per cent), Hertfordshire (14 per cent) and Bolton (13 per cent).

Many of those who turn up at teaching union conferences will be full time union activists funded by Conservative-run councils.

Conservative Councillors conference sees call to act against pilgrims

The Conservative Councillors Association conference in Leeds this weekend will see a demonstration of leftwing militants from the trade union funded Right to Work Campaign.

The unions are funding the demonstrators. But who is funding the unions? We are.

Conservative MP Matthew Hancock is speaking at the conference to put the case that councils can and should spend money on services, not union subsidies. He believes that rather than wait for new guidance from Eric Pickles they should get on with it. Council Taxpayers will be shocked that many Councils spend millions on full time trade union activities, not public services.  ‘Pilgrims’ are fully salaried public servants who’s work hours are spent partly or fully undertaking trade union activities and using grace and favour facilities. They are present in public sector institutions from the local level (e.g. Local Authorities) up to the national level.

Mr Hancock raises an interesting question of what would happen if the matter was debated at a Council meeting and the matter went to a vote. The Localism Act requires Councillors to declare their financial interests, and makes provision for Councillors to be disbarred from voting where they have a conflict of interests. Therefore Union-supported Councillors will be unable to vote for public subsidy for unions. So this could be an interesting issue for Conservative councillors to table a motion on and have the prospect of having the motion carried even where there is a Labour-run council.