The government’s trade union bill will reduce the capacity of unions to represent people at work and undermine the basic right to strike. Through measures including allowing employers to bring in agency workers to strike break, requiring protesters to publish detailed advance plans of their likely activities, including whether or not they will set up a Twitter account and if so what it will say, and leaving unions open to legal challenges if people on picket lines fail to wear an armband, the bill sets out to make genuine industrial action ­– always taken as a last resort – near impossible.

Today’s announcement is no different in its motivations. This latest last-minute addition to the bill is a move to make it easier for the government to end union membership check-off arrangements in the public sector. Check-off is the process by which employers deduct union subscriptions from wages directly – following the written agreement of workers that they want the employer to do so.

Cabinet Office minster Matt Hancock has said of the proposals: ‘It’s time to get rid of this outdated practice and modernise the relationship between trade unions and their members. By ending check-off we are bringing greater transparency to employees – making it easier for them to choose whether or not to pay subscriptions and which union to join’.

But this government spin contains a number of significant factual errors.

First, employees already choose whether or not to pay subscriptions. No union member is automatically enrolled into a check-off arrangement. They have to choose whether to opt in or not and confirm to their employer in writing that they want to do so.

Second, ending check-off will reduce transparency, not increase it. Under check-off the employer has a full list of who is in the union. And the worker gets a reminder of the fact every month, itemised clearly on their payslip.

Third, the practice is not outdated. Check-off is widely used across many of our most productive private sector businesses. Companies like Rolls Royce, Jaguar Land Rover, GKN, Siemens and many more all provide check-off facilities. Payroll deductions are widely used for a range of other costs including bike purchase schemes and childcare vouchers. The prime minister has also been keen to promote payroll deductions for charitable giving.

Fourth, removing check-off will not increase choice. In most cases, there is one recognised union at an employer. If you want to leave that one and join another that does not have recognition, you are completely free to, whether you pay under a check-off system or not, but the union will not have negotiation rights with the employer, so will be less well placed to represent you. The only person that has an interest in getting people to switch out of recognised unions is an employer who wants to weaken their staff unions.

The reality is that this move seeks to further undermine union organisation in the public sector, making it harder for workers to act to protect their jobs and the quality of public services during the period of significant spending cuts that lies ahead. As the previous chief secretary to the Treasury has said, there is ‘no fiscal case for doing this, as unions have offered to pay any costs associated with check-off, which are in any case minimal’. Today’s announcement joins many other parts of the trade union bill in being a deliberate attempt to undermine unions, making it harder for them to represent people at work.

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Paul Nowak is assistant general secretary of the TUC

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Photo: Kevin Zim