Much effort is being expended within UNISON to spread
complacency about the threat to the survival of the Union posed by the
Government’s manifesto commitment to “legislate
to ensure trade unions use a transparent opt-in process for union
subscriptions.” Considerable hope is invested in the possibility that no
new primary legislation to this effect will be flagged up in the Queen’s Speech
next Wednesday.
This desperate imitation of an ostrich completely
ignores, of course, the fact that our members in the civil service (for example
in that part of probation which has not been privatised) are – along with all
the other civil service trade unions facing the withdrawal of deduction of
contributions at source (DOCAS) without there having been any legislation at
all. There is little doubt that the Government has the same authority in the
English health service that it had in the civil service departments to drive
through similar changes without legislation should it wish to do so.
Obviously though, the Government would eventually need to
legislate if it wanted to force organisations which it does not directly control
to abandon DOCAS. Perhaps the silliest thing I have heard said this week on
this topic was a report from UNISON’s Greater London Region Recruitment and
Organisation Committee where – apparently – it was suggested that it would be
difficult for the Government to legislate away DOCAS. This suggestion betrays a
breathtaking ignorance of the recent history of employment legislation in the
United Kingdom.
Section 15 of the Trade Union Reform and Employment
Rights Act 1993 (as
originally enacted) amended section 68 of the Trade Union and Labour
Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 to require employers deducting union
subscriptions to have the signature of each employee at least once every three
years (until the New Labour Government repealed
this in 1998).
One option, if the Government wished to discourage DOCAS
would be to re-impose this restriction, or to require more frequent approval
(say annually). This would create a significant administrative burden on both
unions and employers and would probably impel the withdrawal of DOCAS in many
instances (since, as we know from the experience in the civil service, even
contractual arrangements with employers provide no useful safeguard to DOCAS
arrangements).
An even simpler legislative change would be to amend
either s68
of the 1992 Act or Section 13 of the
Employment Rights Act 1996 so
that deductions in respect of union subscriptions could not be authorised
deductions. This would mean that any employer making such deductions would be
at risk that any union member might, at any point, ask for all the
subscriptions deducted from their pay to be reimbursed to them. Unless trade
unions indemnified employers (at incalculable financial risk) employers would
clearly not bear that risk themselves.
Neither of these possible legal changes would be right,
or fair, or justifiable and each would only be considered by a Government which
cared nothing for fairness but was motivated by an ideological hostility to
trade unionism per se. A bit like a
Government that would introduce a 50% turnout threshold in strike ballots and a
threshold of 40% of the total membership voting yes in ballots in “essential
services.
The threat to DOCAS (the means whereby 70% of our members pay their union subs) is very real and very imminent and
anyone who doesn’t think we should give a high priority to preparing an urgent
response is not paying attention.
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