Labour Government Paying Its Activists with Your Money
The Third World-like Tory/Labour corruption quagmire knows no limits. Millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money is being spent paying for Labour-supporting trade union officials in Whitehall, it has emerged.
The arrangement has been in place for decades and was endorsed by previous Conservative administrations as well.
Ten government departments employ full-time union officials, paying them from the state payroll. These officials do no work at all for the state but are employed full time organising their unions.
In effect this means that the taxpayers are paying for full-time officials to have jobs organising unions which support the Labour Party.
There are no less than 100 of these union activists in Whitehall, many of them earning salaries of £60,000 a year or more working as shop stewards and administrators.
The Home Office employs 83 full-time and part-time union officials. A total of ten departments have revealed that they employ 46 full-time and 87 part-time officials to work exclusively for the unions.
The total salary cost is around £4.5 million per department and they are also given access to office facilities worth an estimated £1.2 million each year.
According to media reports, Whitehall sources claim that the union officials also spend time working on “far-left political campaigns” which is the main focus of the trade unions these days.
The three unions that work inside Whitehall are the PCS, Prospect and the FDA (First Division Association).
A spokesman for the PCS, Alex Flynn, defended the blatant swindle, pointing out that “This is an established custom and practice which is enshrined in law and which both Labour and Conservative governments have recognised is important to the successful and efficient running of government departments.”
Matthew Elliott of the TaxPayers’ Alliance said: “It is unacceptable for the taxpayer to have to fund trade union officials in Whitehall.
“The unions already enjoy huge direct funding from the taxpayer, and this kind of subsidy is utterly unjustified,” Mr Elliot said.
“People pay their taxes for front-line services, not for well-paid political activists to campaign against taxpayers’ interests.”
* According to Electoral Commission records, union donations accounted for £5.4 million, or 69 percent, of Labour’s fundraising in the first six months of the year.
