“Another spiteful measure” – unions criticise government plans to strip workers of right to automatically pay subscription fees

Unions have criticised Government plans to take away public sector workers’ right to have union subscription fees automatically taken deducted from their wages as “another spiteful measure”.

Under the Government’s plans, public sector workers will no longer be able to automatically pay subscriptions fees to trade unions through their salaries. Workers will have to ensure that trade union fees are paid from their bank account by direct debit.

This is part of updated legislation in the Trade Union Bill, which also seeks to impose stricter strike rules. These moves have been called the biggest crackdown on trade unions in over 30 years. 

Labour MP Jon Ashworth has criticised these plans as a “mean spirited and ideological attack on the rights of ordinary trade union members in the workplace”.”Labour is committed to check-off and the Tories should abandon plans to scrap it,” he says.

Unions say these plans are a “vindictive political attack” that will “poison industrial relations”. The TUC’s assistant general secretary Paul Nowak has pointed out that “if payroll payment for union membership was out-dated, it would not be popular with so many of the UK ‘s biggest private companies with positive union relations.

The money that trade unions could stand to lose out on it used to “promote training, workplace safety and hold up decent pay for millions of working people throughout the UK.”

Gail Cartmail, Unite assistant general secretary has criticised these plans as “another spiteful measure from the Conservatives at a time when working people need unions like never before.”

She argued that these plans are: “unnecessary interference by a government that has not got a clue about the reality of working life and the vital role unions have in workers’ lives”, and they they show “the Conservative party’s attempt to pose as the party of working people is all the more laughable today than ever.”
 
She notes that this “malicious attack on the people who are the backbone of our public services” will affect  “the majority female low paid public sector workforce – health visitors, carers, cleaners and cooks – this is now the triple whammy. On top of the pay cap and end of working family tax credit, they now have to contend with this attack on their union.”

The TUC have echoed similar criticism of the Government’s plans,  saying it is “determined to re-balance power in the workplace, so that workers lose their voice and their rights”.