PCS success over check-off challenge
Taxpayers face a £90,000 legal bill after a High Court judge ruled in favour of the PCS civil service union and said that the communities secretary, Eric Pickles, had acted unlawfully by unilaterally scrapping the check-off system for collecting union subscriptions through salaries.
The Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) had tried to end the decades-old arrangement even though it only costs the department £300 a year to administer.
The judge ruled that the move was a breach of contract and must be reversed, and ordered DCLG to pay the union's legal costs as well as its own. The £90,000 bill would cover the cost of check-off at the DCLG for the next 300 years.
Pickles has previously advised local authorities to end check-off and was the first cabinet minister to attempt to apply it in the civil service.
PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka described it as a “reckless and political attempt to undermine our union”.
He added: “Pickles has very serious questions to answer about why he decided to spend tens of thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money fighting to scrap something that costs less than £30 a month.”