Government attacks on trade union rights and facility arrangements

Facility time has been under sustained attack by the government, especially in the public sector. In October 2012, the government drastically curtailed the facility time available to civil service trade union reps and introduced a ban on reps being promoted while working full-time on union work. The then minister for the Cabinet Office Francis Maude boasted that the government has “slashed the number of full-time taxpayer-funded union officials by over 90%” since 2010.

By the second quarter of 2014 there were only 13 reps on full facility time in government departments, compared with 200 in November 2011. The number has since fallen to single figures. The number of general reps has also declined dramatically.

The same pattern of behaviour is seen in local government. Councils must now publish detailed annual figures on union reps and trade union facility time under the Local Government Transparency Code 2014. The trade union data that must be published annually includes:

• the number of staff who are union reps (including general reps and learning and health and safety reps);

• the number who devote at least 50% of their time to union duties;

• the names of all trade unions represented in the authority;

• a basic estimate of spending on unions (the number of days spent on union duties multiplied by the average salary); and

• a basic estimate of spending on unions as a percentage of the total pay bill.