Outrage at £2.5m taxpayer cash for unions

The region’s local authorities were strongly criticised after figures showed footing the wage bill of union convenors cost the taxpayer about £50,000 a week last year.

Kirklees Council, which has a total workforce of about 18,000, was the biggest payer, spending more than £700,000 on salaries.

Other authorities with high salary costs included Sheffield, where the bill totalled more than £500,000, and Leeds, which paid almost £350,000.

Shipley Conservative MP Philip Davies, who obtained the figures through a freedom of information request, said: “It’s a complete and utter outrage. People working for unions should be paid by the unions.

“It’s unacceptable that taxpayers dip their hands in their pockets to pay for union officials often to act for the opposite interest of the taxpayer.

“You couldn’t make it up. When councils start bleating that they have got no money this goes to show there’s plenty of other things they could cut first before they start cutting front line services.”

But unions claim the arrangement actually saves the taxpayer money, and councils insist they are obliged by law to allow some employees time off, with pay, to represent their fellow workers.

A Kirklees Council spokeswoman said: “It is written in law that if you are a shop steward, or equivalent trade union official, you are entitled to reasonable paid time off to carry out your duties and to receive relevant training. The law is supplemented by a code of practice published by ACAS – the national organisation which promotes strong industrial relations – which helps to define the duties covered.

“As such this is common practice in large organisations, both in the private and public sector.

Judith Badger, director of finance and property at Wakefield Council, which spent more than £210,000 last year, said: “Full-time convenors are fully involved in all consultative arrangements and have a full understanding of all the issues affecting the council.

“This enables the council to plan, and administer consultation and negotiations more efficiently than relying on ad hoc representatives.”

A spokeswoman for the UK’s largest public-sector union, Unison, said: “These councils represent many thousands of staff and all of these staff members have a right to be represented.

“If trade union representatives are going to represent staff properly, they are going to need time away from their normal jobs to do that.

“Meetings between staff representatives and workers occur are held during working hours, and collective bargaining has actually saved cash because, if councils negotiated with individuals, they would spend a fortune on consultants or moderators.”

Unison claimed that research carried out in 2007 had found that public-sector union representatives saved the taxpayer between £167m and £397m per year.

“This is because they were resolving disputes or taking up training and cutting turnover of staff,” the spokeswoman added.

Mr Davies is not the first Tory MP in the region to question taxpayer-funded salaries for union activists.

In June Selby and Ainsty MP Nigel Adams criticised North Yorkshire Council for paying the salaries of full-time and part-time officials and wrote to the council’s leader, John Weighell. His letter prompted a firm response from Coun Weighell’s deputy Carl Les, who described the intervention as “unhelpful” and “inflammatory”.