The First U-Turn

It didn’t take long.

The need to make massive savings did seem to have concentrated the minds of some of those on Newham Council. Amongst the savings they proposed was the reduction or abolition of facility time for trade union reps.

Newham currently has agreements with the major unions whereby elected union officers remain on the pay-roll but are effectively full-time union officers as opposed to council workers. This is not unusual and is widespread across the public sector and in some larger private companies.

Newham proposed to reduce this.

The idea did not go down well with the unions.

Consequently, in the cabinet papers for 5th November we see a humiliating backtracking from Cllr Z Ali.

“The Mayor and Cabinet value the important role that trade unions play in the workplace in the support of employment rights and during a time of change at the Council. Consequently, this report proposes that the Trade Union facility time saving as detailed in Appendix A of the October Finance (Quarter Two 2024/25) report, and as approved at the formal meeting of Cabinet on the 15th October 2024, is withdrawn from the list of savings.”

As we have seen in the past, apply a little pressure and the centre cracks.

It does mean that they have to find £120,000 from somewhere, but that shouldn’t be a problem.