{"id":80590,"date":"2017-04-09T08:00:01","date_gmt":"2017-04-09T08:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/?guid=118193e550a03c88680450d6c0e303e3"},"modified":"2017-04-09T08:00:01","modified_gmt":"2017-04-09T08:00:01","slug":"news-story-trade-unions-to-face-new-fines-of-up-to-20000-for-breaking-governance-laws","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/?p=80590","title":{"rendered":"News story: Trade unions to face new fines of up to \u00a320,000 for breaking governance laws"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"govspeak\">\n<p>Trade unions are set to face new fines of up to \u00a320,000 for breaking governance laws under plans being consulted on by the government.<\/p>\n<p>Under the proposals, the union regulator, the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gov.uk\/government\/organisations\/certification-officer\">Certification Officer<\/a>, will be able to issue fines of up to \u00a320,000 for breaking the law including serious breaches of election rules or mismanagement of their political funds.<\/p>\n<p>Currently the Certification Officer cannot impose a financial penalty, instead issuing a declaration or an enforcement order if a union breaches its statutory obligations under the Trade Union and Labour Relations Act.<\/p>\n<p>The new proposed powers the Certification Officer will be able to fine unions for breaches like:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>failing to ensure senior positions are not held by someone with a criminal record<\/li>\n<li>breaching requirements for elections to senior positions<\/li>\n<li>mismanagement of political funds<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>A spokesperson for the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy said:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Trade unions exist to represent workers\u2019 interests and make decisions which can affect millions of people\u2019s lives, so it is right for the government to ensure they are run responsibly.<\/p>\n<p class=\"last-child\">The proposed powers will make sure unions are properly regulated in the future to ensure they truly represent the interests of their members.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>The government is consulting on these powers as agreed during the passage of the Trade Union Act last year.<\/p>\n<p>The majority of the Act\u2019s new powers came into force on 1 March, bringing in tougher ballot requirements for industrial action \u2013 particularly for important public services like health, education and transport.<\/p>\n<p>This will save more than 1.5 million working hours a year from being lost to undemocratic strike action.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gov.uk\/government\/consultations\/trade-union-act-2016-consultation-on-the-certification-officers-enforcement-powers\">consultation on the Certification Officer\u2019s powers<\/a> will run for 6 weeks from 9 April until 21 May.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"further-information\">Further information<\/h2>\n<ol>\n<li>The Certification Officer is responsible for regulating statutory functions relating to trade unions and employers\u2019 associations.<\/li>\n<li>The Certification Officer\u2019s complaint rulings are published online.<\/li>\n<li>The Trade Union Act which came into force on 1 March, is expected to reduce strikes:\n<ul>\n<li>on important public services like transport, education and health by 35%<\/li>\n<li>in all other sectors from construction to water supply by 29%<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Under the proposals the Certification Officer will be able to issue fines of up to \u00a320,000 for breaking the law.<\/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\/80590"}],"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=80590"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80590\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=80590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=80590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=80590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}