Unions and the
Socialist Organiser1983 1983-02-24Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 8 →
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previous Tory legislation has left it with.
•Another alternative would be to require periodic secret ballots of the whole membership who would be asked to decide whether the existing union electoral system was satisfactory or not. easily be represented as 'external interference' in union affairs"
•Another alternative would be to give the employer the right to trigger the ballot and perhaps organise it. This "would also have the advantage of ensuring that the voice of non-union employees was heard"
•Unions which have political funds and are affiliated to the Labour Party have only been able to do this after holding a ballot of all their members and allowing rules on these matters (which have to be in the rule book) to be vetted by the Certification Officer (Trade Union Act 1913, Trade Union and Labour Relations Act 1974). Tebbit now suggests that unions should hold further ballots at regular periodic intervals to see if support for these objectives should be continued.
• At the moment a worker who does not want to contribute to her/his union's political fund can fill in a form stating that s/he does not want to pay the political levy. Unions provide members with forms and the law provides for no discrimination against anybody who does opt out.
Tebbit now proposes that the law should be changed so that if you want to pay the political levy, as the vast majority of trade unionists do, you would have to 'opt in' •Right now unions can make payments from their general funds to organisations which are not involved in financing candidates for Parliament. Donations to organisations which are -like the Labour Party - have to come out of the special political fund.
So your union might make a donation out of its General Fund to Labour Research or the National Council for Civil Liberties. •Tebbit now suggests changing the law so that these donations could only come out of the Political Fund.
•Legislation should also be introduced to make unions cough up more details to the membership of such contributions to outside bodies and give all members access to detailed accounts.
= Where four bass deducts your union dues as source. it could be made = at to pritica contributions to be state vIt be 7s. Atematively any deduction of political contributions would have to be dealt with separately.
JOHN HARRIS strike to support the NHS workers