Nearly 15,000 public sector staff were given paid leave to moonlight as trade unionists and help plot strikes last year – including 3,000 NHS workers, new figures show.
Around £90million of taxpayers’ cash was spent by councils, schools, Whitehall departments and the health service last year to cover the cost of staff engaging in trade union work.
Of more than 20,000 union representatives embedded in public bodies, 14,976 (74 per cent) enjoyed paid leave to work on union activities.
Staggeringly, 2,258 of them spent more than half their working hours on union business rather than delivering public services – with nearly 1,000 devoting their entire time to working for union causes. This included handing out leaflets and plotting industrial action.
It means taxpayers have helped fund strike plots that have crippled their public services, including resident doctors’ walkouts, HM Revenue and Customs strikes and industrial action by bin collectors.
The arrangement, known as ‘facility time’, gives public sector workers the right to be paid their wages while carrying out trade union activity.
Critics last night said Labour had allowed its union ‘paymasters’ to effectively ‘take over’ many public bodies, with some spending up to 15 per cent of their wage bill giving staff paid leave for union work.
Resident doctors from the BMA union are among the thousands of public sector workers who have been given paid leave to spend on union activities, including organising industrial action
Resident doctors, formerly known as junior doctors, on strike last year. They are demanding another double-digit percentage pay increase after getting one in 2024
Health Secretary Wes Streeting is in a bitter dispute with resident doctors over pay. He and other Cabinet Ministers were accused of allowing unions to ‘take over’ some public bodies
They also warned the figures are likely to spiral after Labour watered down rules aimed at limiting ‘facility time’ in its Employment Rights Bill, which gained Royal Assent in December.
The analysis of official figures shows that nearly £19million was spent last year by the NHS for staff to moonlight as trade unionists – up 10 per cent from three years ago when the Tories were in charge.
Across more than 150 health trusts, 2,978 staff were given paid leave to spend at least some of their working day on union activities.
This included 305 who spent more than half their working hours on trade union business and 172 who devoted their entire time to it rather than looking after the interests of patients.
The bill was the second largest by sector only to councils, which spent £29.4million on facility time last year.
It will anger homeowners, most of whom have seen their council tax bills hiked by at least 5 per cent.
More than 3,000 council workers enjoyed at least some paid leave to spend time on union activities.
Unite union bin collection workers have been striking since last January. Staff at Birmingham City Council are also among thousands of public sector workers given paid leave to help plot the strikes
The Birmingham bin strikes have left the streets of the city piled high with rubbish
Residents have reported seeing ‘rats as big as cats’ in Birmingham due to the bin strikes, which have been taking place since last January
A total of 631 spent more than half their working hours on union work and nearly 500 spent their entire time on it.
Elsewhere, facility time cost Whitehall departments £13.8million last year, up from £10.9million three years ago.
More than 3,600 civil servants enjoyed at least some paid leave to work on union activities, with 1,065 spending over half their time on union business.
The organisation with the largest facility time bill was the Ministry of Justice – £3.2million. This was followed by HM Revenue and Customs (£2.3million) and the NHS Lothian health trust (£2.2million).
The public body with the largest number of union representatives embedded in the organisation was the Department for Work and Pensions – 1,014.
This was followed by HM Revenue and Customs (776) and the Ministry of Justice (647).
Former Tory Health Secretary Steve Barclay said: ‘While [Health Secretary] Wes Streeting is prioritising his bid for No 10, trade unions are diverting resources away from patients to fund their hard Left campaigns.
‘NHS funds should be focused on improving patient care, but instead mismanagement like this is why taxes are going up to a record high.’
Former Tory leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith said: ‘This Labour government is in hoc to the unions. They’re their paymasters.
‘So everything is going to get worse because people like Angela Rayner believe in all this rubbish, which is that there can be no end to the rights of workers.
‘The problem is they’re driving people away from the country because under all the new arrangements this stuff is now fully extendable to the private companies and half the reason why productivity is so bad in the UK is that the public sector drags it down.
‘Public sector productivity is shockingly low and these figures partly explain why.’
Former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith said the figures showed the unions were Labour’s ‘paymasters’ and that they had allowed the unions to effectively ‘take over’ some public bodies
Angela Rayner championed the Employment Rights Bill which has watered down rules designed to limit ‘facility time’
HMRC workers from the hardline PCS union were also among those who enjoyed paid leave to help organise strikes
John O’Connell, chief executive of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: ‘Taxpayers have long been livid about the extent to which trade unions have taken over public sector bodies, with most organisations putting paid-up union employees on the pay roll.
‘It is particularly shocking that NHS trusts, so frequently moaning about a lack of resources, are some of the worst offenders, as these figures show.
‘The NHS needs to cut down on facility time, and at the very least ban staff working more than 50 per cent of their hours for a union.’
Health Secretary Wes Streeting has admitted the latest resident doctors’ strikes, orchestrated by the militant British Medical Association (BMA) union, have already cost the NHS at least £250million.
Forecasts estimate this could hit more than £1billion over the next few years if the walkouts continue at the same frequency. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of operations have had to be re-scheduled and cancelled.
It means the strikes have also hit waiting lists at many trusts, with nearly a quarter of hospitals in England having seen waiting times worsen since the government published its plan to tackle backlogs a year ago.
Resident doctors, formally known as junior doctors, voted for six months more of strike action this month.
They want another pay rise of 29 per cent despite accepting a 22.3 per cent hike – one of Mr Streeting’s first major decisions as Health Secretary – in September 2024.
Elsewhere, bin collection strikes by the Unite union continue to affect residents in Birmingham after walkouts began last January.
Last year, HMRC strikes orchestrated by the PCS union also sparked major delays in tax refunds and crippled other customer services.
More than 800,000 working days have been lost to strike action across the private and public sector since Labour won the July 2024 election.
Under Labour’s Employment Rights Bill the requirement for public bodies to record the cost to taxpayers of facility time was scrapped.
It means last year’s figures, published last week by the Cabinet Office, may be the last full picture of how much it costs taxpayers.
Meanwhile, the new law will essentially allow union reps to decide how to use ‘facility time’, giving them more time off their day jobs to spend on union business.
Government guidance sets out how it introduces the right to time off ‘for the purpose of promoting the value of equality in the workplace’.
Critics have also pointed out that the Bill repeals the minimum 50% turnout, introduced under the Tories, required in strike ballots for walkouts to be legal, making future industrial action easier.
Dr Tom Dolphin, chair of the BMA council, said: ‘Facility time is an essential part of a well-functioning workplace.
‘It empowers reps from the BMA and other unions, all hard-working NHS staff, to support their colleagues by sorting workplace disputes, identifying errors of management and protecting patient safety.’
A Government Spokesperson said: ‘We are investing record levels into our NHS to cut waiting lists and get patients seen on time, with more doctors and nurses on the front line.
‘As a proportion of pay, these costs are in line with previous years.’
… with £1million bill for bin strike council
By David Churchill
The town hall at the centre of year-long bin strikes in Birmingham gave staff more than £1million-worth of paid leave to moonlight as trade unionists, analysis reveals.
Labour-run Birmingham City Council spent £1.1million on so-called ‘facility time’ last year (24/25), which gives staff who are trade union officials the right to be paid to carry out union duties.
It is understood that some of it related to officials affiliated with Unite, the union at the centre of the strikes.
It means affected residents, who had their council tax bills hiked by 20 per cent after the town hall said it was bankrupt, have helped fund the plotting of strikes, which started in January last year.
In total, 31 Birmingham City Council staff spent their entire working hours on union business last year.
Facility time has cost the local authority £3.5million over the last three years.
Beyond Birmingham, town halls across the UK spent £29million last year on giving workers paid leave to spend on union business amid most planning to hike council tax bills by at least 5 per cent from April this year.
More than 3,200 council staff spent at least some of their working hours on union business.
Last year, the Mail revealed how nearly a quarter of Sir Keir Starmer’s MPs have pocketed cash from the militant Unite union.
Of Labour’s 403 MPs, 92 have raked in a whopping £600,000 from Unite barons over the last year.
While ministers have urged refuse workers to accept the deal on the table from Labour-run Birmingham City Council, they have been noticeably reluctant to outright condemn the union publicly.
Thousands of tonnes of rubbish have piled up on the city’s streets, with residents reporting ‘rats as big as cats’ rifling through the detritus.
The dispute centres on the role of the waste recycling and collection officer, created after refuse worker strikes over pay in 2017.
The council says it must get rid of the role to bring it in line with national standards and comply with a legal ruling on equal pay.
Unite says the role does not need to be cut and that the council’s decision will lead to a pay cut of £8,000 a year for 150 workers.
The council disputes the figure and says only 17 people would lose more than £6,000.
A Birmingham City Council spokesperson said: ‘Birmingham is the largest local authority in the country, so the amount cited for facility time reflects that.’