Who pays, who gains?

According to today's Daily Mail, we the taxpayers are paying for an army of trade union officials in various departments of the government, some of whom earn as much as £60,000 in salary. There is a vast army of these shop stewards. The Home Office alone has 13 full-time trade unionists and 70 part-time, plus two administrative staff, who represent four unions.

The costs of this are not easy to discover, but as an example the Business Department "employs" 5 full time staff, who are paid collectively nearly £185,500, that's about £37,000m each, the Foreign Office £employs" 4 full-time and pays collectively £161, 800, or just over £40,000 each.

The times was able to find 83 full-time "employees", but has no numbers for Defence (but pays £4.5 million a year), and no information from the Treasury or DWP.

(These figures were published on the Red Box site today.) With two big departments missing from the findings of the Times newspaper, it is difficult to know what the total figure is, but it must be many millions. In addition, there is the cost of their office space, equipment and sundries and any perks to which they are entitled.

The unions, and their Labour Party friends, would claim that large private companies offer the same, and do so because it helps to reduce and shorten disputes. This may or may not be true in relation to parliament, but in private industry the shareholders know about this, and management would look askance if the privilege was abused.

We are the shareholders, and our money is involved. When were we told?

The other major problem is that there are apparently not enough disputes to reduce or shorten, and the trade unionists engage in other pursuits,- the Daily Mail reports complaints made that this army on the public payroll engage in "far-left political campaigns and making false claims about the Conservative Party. So it's a little like the £10,000 communication allowance we give MPs, only much more expensive.

It is to be hoped that if and when Cameron becomes Prime Minister he will consider cutting this expensive left-wing indulgence, or let them fund it from member contributions, as well as the communication allowance.