Fire Brigades Union – Written evidence (TUP0022)

1. General comments to the committee

The Fire Brigades Union (FBU) welcomes the opportunity to give evidence to the committee on clauses 10 and 11 of the Trade Union Bill.  The FBU is the authoritative, professional voice of firefighters across the UK. The union represents the vast majority of firefighters in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, including wholetime (full-time) and retained (part-time, on-call) operational firefighters and control staff.

Ensuring that politicians understand the implication of their decisions for firefighters working at the sharp-end of service delivery is central to the FBU's work. The political fund enables the FBU to take workplace campaigns into the political arena to influence political decisions.

All members have the option of opting out of contributing to the political fund when they join or at any point during their membership. The number of FBU members who have utilised their right to opt out of paying the political levy or decided that their contributions should not be used for party affiliation proves that members understand the different rates available, the differences in contribution categories and that the opt-out system currently in place in England, Scotland and Wales is fit for purpose.

The government is attempting to deliberately reduce participation in order to decimate union political funds, their capacity to engage in political debates and ability to support the Labour Party. This is the government’s true intention and represented a deplorable partisan attack on the democratic process.

2. The Fire Brigade Unions political fund arrangements

2.1  Membership and contributions

The FBU offer a range of membership rates in order to reflect the occupational status and individual preferences of members.

Table 1: FBU Contributions from 1st August 2015[1]

In addition to the standard ‘trade’ union membership, members also have the option of contributing to the FBUs accident and injury fund (AIF) and political fund.

The AIF provides financial assistance to eligible members in the event of an injury on or off duty, or bereavement, and handles around £600,000 claims each year. All members who wish to contribute to the fund pay a standard rate of £0.79 per week.

Membership forms and information about the different contribution rates available are detailed on the FBU website. However, the vast majority of members sign up in person through an FBU brigade organiser. Every fire and rescue service in the UK has at least one brigade organiser, trained to advise new recruits and existing members of the different contribution rates and membership options available. All new members are also provided with a hard-copy of the FBUs rule book detailing the different contribution levels in accordance with the FBUs own rules.

Members are able to change their decision on whether to contribute to the AIF or political fund at any point in the course of their membership.

2.2  The Political Fund

Unions are required by law to ballot members every 10 years if they wish to maintain a political fund. The last FBU political fund ballot was held in May 2014: 84% of FBU members voted to keep the FBUs political fund. The turnout was 29%.

Contributions to the FBUs political fund for the year end 31 December 2014 was £256,979. Political levy payers currently contribute 16p per week.

At present, 82.2% of FBU members pay a political contribution. FBU members in England, Scotland and Wales have the option to opt-out of paying the political levy when they sign up as a member or at any point in the course of their membership.

Table 2: FBU membership contributions for England, Scotland and Wales on 31 December 2015

FBU members in Northern Ireland must specify that they wish to participate in the fund when they sign up as a member and can change their preferences at any point during the course of their membership. At present, 42.9% of FBU members in Northern Ireland have opted into the political fund.

Levy paying members also have the option of specifying that they do not wish their contributions to be used for party affiliation. As of 31 Dec 2013, 19.2% of levy paying members decided their contributions should not be used for party affiliation.

The variances in the contribution preferences of FBU members clearly demonstrate that members have a good understanding of the different option available to them and are able to exercise their right to choose whether to contribute to the union’s political fund and if so, whether it is used for party affiliation.

2.3  Non-partisan political fund expenditure

Ensuring that politicians understand the implication of their decisions for firefighters working at the sharp-end of service delivery is central to the FBU's work. The political fund enables the FBU to take workplace campaigns into the political arena and influence political decisions and have a say on changes in the law. Recent examples including campaigns against fire station closures, changes to firefighters pensions and a nationwide “Ring of Fire” tour of the UK to highlight the devastating impact the government’s austerity agenda is having on the fire and rescue service.

2.4  Labour Party political fund income

The FBU disaffiliated in 2004. In this period, the FBU supported the election campaigns of 30 individual candidates who supported firefighters and the fire service and by oppose cuts and defending jobs, pay and conditions. All donations were registered with the Electoral Commission.

In December 2015, the FBUs recall-conference voted to re-affiliate to the Labour Party. The decision to re-affiliate did not result in the FBU affiliating to Labour in either Scotland or Northern Ireland and no political fund money from members in either region would go to the Labour party.

As a result of different affiliation arrangements in different regions and the option for political levy paying members to opt out of paying affiliation fees, the number of people paying into the fund is higher than the number who are affiliated to the Labour Party.

Affiliated members currently pay £3 per year from their political levy (£2.90 to the Labour Party; £0.10 to TULO).

3. The Select Committee Consultation

3.1                                                                                                                                    The impact on the trade union political fund

The FBU firmly believe that clause 10 will have a detrimental effect upon the unions’ political funds.

The Government’s rationale for the proposed changes is that the ‘opt-out’ system “may mean that some members are contributing to a political fund that they do not actively support, due to a potential lack of awareness among members about their contribution to the fund”.[2] The implication from this is that if members had to opt-in to the political fund then fewer would.

The FBU completely rejects the notion that FBU members are unknowingly contributing to a political fund they do not support. Our members have a good awareness of different contribution rates available as evidenced by the variances in the contribution preferences of FBU members and the fact that the FBU has a substantially higher opt-in rate in Northern Ireland (42.9%) than opt-out rate in England, Scotland and Wales (15.9%). The current system is fit for purpose.

Nevertheless, there is clear evidence that an opt-in system would lead to fewer members contributing to the political fund. This is because opt-in systems lead to lower levels of participation in all areas of life. For example, we know that many people who express a desire to join the organ donation register fail to do so. Opinion polls consistently show that 9 out of 10 people support organ donation but less than 1 in 3 have signed the organ donation register.[3] This is why many governments are introducing opt-out systems in order to make it easier for people who support organ donation to give their consent. This government is well versed in behavioural research which is why they have introduced auto enrolment into pension’s scheme where the onus is on the employee to opt-out.

There is also a wealth of contemporary evidence that opt-in systems lead to fewer members contributing from within the trade union movement. According to the Government’s own figures, around 33% of Northern Irish members of British trade unions with political funds contribute to the funds, compared with the union average of 89% across the UK where union members are required to opt-out.

Furthermore, when the Committee on Standards in Public Life in 2011 recommended a £10,000 cap on donations in the context of trade unions requiring their members to opt in to the payment of an affiliation fee, their analysis estimated that just “30 per cent of affiliation fees continued to be paid under the new opt-in arrangement.”

3.2                                                                                                                                    Impact on other areas of trade union funding

The FBU is also concerned that clause 10 could have a knock-on effect on other aspects of union finances. The political fund enables unions to organise high-profile political campaigns that influence decision-makers for their benefit of their members. These campaigns are highly-visible and effective; members can see unions championing their causes, defending their jobs, terms and conditions and securing improvements on their behalf. If unions are unable to finance effective campaign activities, they will be less able to influence decision makers and some members may not see the value of remaining in a trade union.

3.3  The Impact of transitional arrangements

The Bill requires trade unions to receive written consent from every member who currently pays into the political fund to say they wish to continue within 3 months. They will be also be required to re-new opt-in consent in writing every five years.

The Transition arrangements for moving to an opt-out system imposes an unreasonable, costly and overwhelming administrative burden on unions. This level of bureaucracy does not apply to any other sector and goes against the government’s purported commitment to cutting red tape for businesses.

This will be a resource intensive process that will have a disproportionate impact on small and medium-sized trade unions including the FBU. The FBU relies on member volunteers, supported by a small number of paid staff, to raise awareness of changes in procedures and facilitate the transition to new arrangements. It will take time to communicate this to members, a task that is exacerbated in our case given that FBU member are spread across some 2,000 work places including remote stations staffed by just a handful of personnel. In larger stations, members are spread across multiple watches and ­have different shift patterns.

Unions are already struggling to adapt to the increased workload resulting from the government’s intention to end check-off arrangements. 97% of FBU members pay their union subscriptions directly from their pay packets. The FBU has worked tirelessly over the last several months to raise awareness of the change and encourage members to switch to direct debit forms and have been forced to employ temporary staff to facilitate this process. This has diverted precious staffing and financial resources away from FBU campaigns tasked with defending our member’s interests and securing workplace improvements.

The 3 month limit is unrealistic and completely unreasonable. It bears no reflection on well-respected research on the subject including the 2011 recommendation of the Committee on Standards in Public Life there should be a four year period for reforms to come into effect. Labour’s Collins Report of 2014 is based around a transitional period of five years.

The timeframe and lack of transitional protection is also unprecedented. In no other area have retrospective changes been introduced whilst organisations have been given sufficient time to bring changes into effect. By comparison, the government gave businesses 2 years to put procedures in place to charge customers 5p for plastic carrier bags. The only conclusion is that this arbitrary time frame has been imposed to reduce the number of trade union members paying the political level in order to reduce the capacity of trade union to participate in the political process.

3.4  Impact on the Labour Party

A decline in the number of members paying the political fund will undoubtedly lead to a fall in the number of members affiliating to the Labour Party which will have serious implications for the Labour Party’s funding. Labour’s own estimate is that they could see a reduction of up to 90 per cent which would equate to an annual loss of £6 million from affiliation fees. Affiliations form part of the Party’s core funding and such a loss could not be absorbed without a fundamental change in how the party operates.

By introducing one-sided political party reform under the guise of the trade union bill, the Conservative Government have failed to address other issues including donation caps, spending limits and transparency that would principally impact their funding. This is in contravention of their manifesto commitment “to seek agreement on a comprehensive package of party funding reform” and the longstanding convention that reform of party funding should proceed on a consensual basis. This is a principle supported by the Phillips and Kelly reports and one which previous Conservative and Labour governments have abided by.

12 February 2016