MOSCOW (Sputnik) — The UK government has announced the cancellation of the automatic payment of trade union membership fees directly from public sector workers’ pay checks, British media reported Thursday, adding that the move is likely to lead to a drop in revenue for trade unions.
The proposal will put an end to a practice whereby trade union membership fees were automatically transferred straight from the salaries of approximately 3.8 million unionized workers, or 54 percent of the public sector workforce, who now will have to organize for the payment of their union subscriptions individually, The Telegraph reported. The measure is expected to cost trade unions tens of millions of pounds annually.
British ministers, in turn, claim that it is a modern approach to the collection of trade union subscriptions, predicting that the move will increase transparency for workers, letting them choose what trade union to join and whether to pay the fees or not.
In 2014, the UK Liberal Democrats partly blocked the Conservative Party’s initiative to stop unions from taking subscription fees directly from civil servants’ pay checks.
