{"id":38560,"date":"2014-02-04T15:21:55","date_gmt":"2014-02-04T15:21:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/?guid=2681196ab9043e45daeef88328d772ff"},"modified":"2014-02-04T15:21:55","modified_gmt":"2014-02-04T15:21:55","slug":"press-release-17-million-estimated-savings-as-cost-of-taxpayer-funded-trade-union-representation-halves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/?p=38560","title":{"rendered":"Press release: \u00a317 million estimated savings as cost of taxpayer-funded trade union representation halves"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"govspeak\">\n<p>The facility time allocation has been falling since November 2011, when the first snapshot of paid union activity in government was taken. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gov.uk\/government\/publications\/trade-union-facility-time\">The new figures, for quarter 3 of 2013<\/a>, show that:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>the number of full-time trade union representatives has fallen by 163 to 37 \u2013 a reduction of four-fifths<\/li>\n<li>the overall number of trade union representatives has fallen by almost 1,000<\/li>\n<li>the average percentage of the pay bill that departments are spending on trade union activity has fallen from 0.26% to below the 0.1% benchmark \u2013 a reduction of two-thirds<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Before 2010 there was no central scrutiny of facility time. In October 2012, the government introduced a range of measures designed to ensure that facility time arrangements in the civil service reflect modern working practices. They included:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>more rigorous, quarterly, monitoring and reporting by departments<\/li>\n<li>a cap on trade union representatives spending more than 50% of their paid time on trade union work without ministerial sign-off<\/li>\n<li>a ban on any full-time representatives being promoted while working full-time on union work<\/li>\n<li>a default position that union activities will not attract paid time off<\/li>\n<li>a guide figure for monitoring the spend on facility time (0.1% of the paybill for 2013)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude said:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Trade unions can play a constructive role in a modern workplace, but in the past taxpayer-funded trade union representation in the civil service was not centrally controlled or monitored. Before 2010, too many civil servants were working on nothing but union work, full-time. Some were even promoted \u2013 1 twice \u2013 despite not doing the job they were employed for, which is not fair to taxpayers or other civil servants.<\/p>\n<p class=\"last-child\">We have introduced monitoring of facility time, and are limiting the amount of time civil servants can spend on trade union work. As part of our long-term economic plan we saved an estimated \u00a317 million last year by controlling trade union representation in the civil service. We\u2019ve reduced the number of full-time representatives by four-fifths since 2011. Today\u2019s figures show that we are making good progress but there\u2019s some way still to go.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Facility Time figures for Q1, Q2 and Q3 in 2013 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gov.uk\/government\/publications\/trade-union-facility-time\">have now been published<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>Following <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gov.uk\/government\/consultations\/reform-to-trade-union-facility-time-and-facilities-in-the-civil-service\">a consultation in 2012 about reforming trade union facility time and facilities in the civil service<\/a>, the government announced that there would be a requirement for departments to report facility time on a quarterly basis to the Cabinet Office for publication.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The cost to taxpayers of trade union representatives in government departments has halved, according to figures published today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38560"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38560"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38560\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}