Downing Street Says » Trade Unions

» Wednesday, February 11, 2004

Trade Unions

Asked the Government’s justification for giving money to Trade Unions, the Prime Minister’s Official Spokesman (PMOS) told journalists that the Government had given a significant sum of money to businesses to help them adapt and change. This was a modest sum amounting to about £5-10 million spread over several years. Obviously, as the Prime Minister had said, the Government was for good employment relations and this was a way of enabling that to happen. The Government was committed to ensuring that we had good labour relations in the UK and had done a huge amount in terms of the minimum wage, paternity leave and union recognition, to address this area. Put to him that the funding to business helped create wealth, which helped to create jobs, but that was not the case with Unions, the PMOS said that in the context of ensuring good employment relations, it was a benefit to the economy as a whole. Asked if the money was being given to Trade Unions because they couldn’t afford to modernize, the PMOS said that Unions had different sources of funding but as had been explained in Parliament, this was money specifically designed to help Unions modernize employer-employee relations and that was obviously a good thing. The measures however would be subject to a vote in the House as part of the Employment Relations Bill. Asked if the money would be specifically ‘ring-fenced’, the PMOS said that there were, for example, funds to allow Unions to embrace new technology more easily to the benefit of the workforce and to business as a whole. Asked who would audit the money, the PMOS said he presumed it would be done by the DTI.

1 Comment »

-;- I am very thankful to this topic because it really gives up to date information ;:,
Comment by Zachary Graham — 24 Jan 2011 on 4:32 pm | Link

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