Another Labour government odd links to Trade Unions story

'Whitehall departments are spending millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money paying the salaries of trade union officials. '

So starts The Telegraph in its story that:

'Ministries and Government agencies spent more than £17 million paying staff to carry out “trade union activities” last year.

Some departments are paying staff to work full-time on trade union business.

And some full-time civil servants spend three days a work carrying out union activities and still receive a full salary from the Government.

Public spending on union activities was disclosed in official figures released to MPs.

The Ministry of Justice said it paid its staff to carry out 43,208 days of trade union activity in 2008/09. The estimated total salary cost to the taxpayer was £6.5 million.

HM Revenue and Customs paid its staff for 48,902 days of union activity during, at a cost of £5,918,065

In the current financial year, the Department for Work and Pensions has budgeted to pay its staff to carry out 42,460 days of trade union activity, at an estimated cost of more than £5 million.

Several ministries said they effectively employ full-time union representatives at public expense.'

And on and on and on.

'The total annual bill for trade union activity in Whitehall is likely to be significantly higher than £17 million, because several ministries and agencies have refused to provide figures for their spending. '

I vaguely remember reading about this sort of activity many years back but this passage was news to me:

'Union representatives have had a statutory right to “reasonable paid

time off” to carry out trade union duties since 1975.

Labour gave union representatives more rights to paid time off in 2002, passing a new law allowing union members paid time off for union training courses.'

This is just ridiculous and is yet another way that the Trade Unions and the Labour party are funding each other WITH TAXPAYERS MONEY.

'Mark Wallace of the Taxpayers’ Alliance said... “There is no reason why taxpayers should subsidise the trade unions at all, and this multi-million pound bill must be stopped. The unions are explicitly political organisations, and they should make do with what money they can raise from their members.

“Many taxpayers will be horrified to learn that their money is being used to fund the unions and their big-state, high tax message. It is bad enough that they are issuing threats of strike action, but having to pay for the people organising the strikes adds insult to injury.” '

So far not a word on the voice of the Labour government website.