Many local and national charities breathed a sigh of relief
last week when Local Government and Communities Secretary of State Eric Pickles
lost his legal fight to scrap the collection of union subscriptions through
salaries. Actually, this court case didn’t involve charities at all, the
outcome was important for them because of that other important law – the law of
unintended consequences. Let me explain.
About thirty years ago, various charities approached both
public and private employers to see whether they would implement a scheme which
allowed an employee to make a donation to a charity of their choice by direct
deduction from their wages. This proposal was modelled on the already existing
scheme which enabled employees to pay their trade union dues by direct
deduction (check off), which had been implemented by the vast majority of
private and public employers. As a result, millions of pounds each year have
been donated to national and local charities.
Fast forward to this year. Eric Pickles, as part of his
strategy to undermine trade unions but presented under the guise of ‘saving
money’, first told councils that they must end check-off and then announced
that he would end check-off for civil servants in the Department for
Communities and Local Government (DCLG). Logically, if check-off for trade
union dues – which relate to both individual and collective agreements between
employees, their representatives and employers, often under-pinned by law –
could not be allowed, how could a scheme for charitable donations – with no
relationship to the employer’s functions at all – possibly be justified?
Bluntly, if check-off schemes were stopped, it seems
inevitable that the charitable donations’ schemes would quickly follow. The
result would be a dramatic loss of income for many charities, which would then
face a massive task of approaching each of the individual employees to get them
to set up individual direct debits as an alternative.
Fortunately, the PCS trade union took Mr Pickles to the High
Court. The judges said the move was a breach of contract and has ordered DCLG
to reverse the decision and pay all legal costs. During the proceedings, it was
revealed the ‘check off’ system costs DCLG just £300 a year to administer. So
the £90,000 legal bill, which will now have to be picked up by the taxpayer on
behalf of Mr Pickles, could have paid for the scheme for the next 300 years.
