Government to stop pounds 6m of funding for unions

THE Government is to stop pounds 6m of public funding for trade union ballots and the training of officials. Abolition of the ballot subsidy and training grant will be phased out over three years, and will represent a significant loss of income.

The decision yesterday by Gillian Shephard, Secretary of State for Employment, comes as Parliament debates the Government's seventh piece of trade union legislation, which could also impose new rules on automatic subscription collection through pay-packet deductions.

Postal ballots can cost a large union, such as the Transport and General Workers' Union, more than pounds 300,000. As more unions have made claims, the money spent by government has risen in each year to about pounds 4m.

Norman Willis, general secretary of the TUC, said the move was a 'vicious and calculated blow to destroy state support for good union practice'.

Mrs Shephard said that the ballot subsidy scheme had been introduced in 1980 to encourage unions to hold postal votes at a time when it was not a legal requirement. Since then, the legislation had been changed and ballots for the election of union general secretaries, their deputies and members of executive committees were mandatory.

'The scheme now operates largely as a public subsidy for ballots which unions are required to carry out under the law,' she said.

Training grants for shop stewards and officials, worth about pounds 2m a year, are also to be scrapped. Mrs Shephard said that unions represented fewer than half the workforce in pay negotiations and strikes were at an all time low. 'In these circumstances, the Government believes that there is no justification for continuing to support this training from public funds,' she said.