Crackdown on trade union powers and perks to be unveiled at Tory Party conference

EXCLUSIVE: Fresh laws are set to crack down on trade unions
Plans to sue: Conservative chairman Grant Shapps
Glenn Copus
28 September 2013
WEST END FINAL

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New laws cracking down on trade union perks and powers will be signalled this weekend at the Tory conference, the Standard has learned.

Party sources say they are considering a wide range of reforms, including scrapping the system under which union fees are deducted straight from some workers’ wage packets.

The plans, for a post-2015 Conservative government, will be signalled by chairman Grant Shapps when he accuses Labour leader Ed Miliband of caving in to union pressure to drop reform.

“Since Miliband has failed to do it, the next Conservative government will,” he is expected to say.

The TaxPayers’ Alliance claims that unions receive subsidies worth some £85 million from public bodies.

Among the reforms being considered are:

* Requiring unions to be charged a full commercial rent for using public buildings and facilities.

* Ending the right to free time off for trade union duties, including for “pilgrims” who work as full-time union officials at the taxpayers’ expense.

* Banning “check-off” of fees from salaries, which some public sector unions use to maintain membership.

* Increasing the threshold before a union can apply for statutory recognition from 10 per cent of a workforce to 30 per cent.

* Insisting that strike ballots do not count unless at least 40 per cent of members vote for it.

* Axing taxpayer funding of the Union Learning Fund, currently £15.5 million, which pays for union officials to be trained.

A spokesman for Unite said the Tories were “stuck in a 1980s timewarp”, adding: “They should stop portraying unions as an enemy within and recognise we are a force for good.”

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But Matthew Sinclair, head of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: “It is unfair that taxpayers are still seeing vast sums of their money being used to pay thousands of trade union activists whose strikes disrupt so many of the services on which they rely.”

Under another plan to be unveiled next week, the long-term unemployed would be stripped of benefits unless they do community work or work experience.

Iain Duncan Smith, the Work and Pensions Secretary, told the Daily Mail: “It’s not acceptable for people to expect to live a life on benefits if they’re able to work.”

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