It puzzles me why when staff in local government who choose to belong to a union pay a sub for that privilege should also receive a further subsidy from the tax payer in the form of state funded union officials?In Central Bedfordshire, a largish Unitary, we have 4 such individuals - 3 full time Unison officials & 1 GMB official. The cost to the Council Tax payer is about £150,000.00 per annum.In an era when we are looking at every item of expenditure I question the viability of this expense.Now I have no problem with unions & they are generally (at a local level) a positive thing & I completely support any employee who wishes to be a member, but I am of the view that it is difficult to justify a cost to all tax payers of this quantum when the cost it could be argued should fall on the union itself.If you start to extrapolate out the cost to the tax payer across just local government the figures start to get quite eye watering - assuming every local authority has at least 1 full time union official & I expect there are quite a few more in many places - the costs run to 10's of millions of £A question to raise in local government circles as to the acceptability of this subsidy in the future!!
