Surprising Result

I sent an FoI request a little while back to Greater Glasgow and Clyde Health Board (GGCHB) about the number of trade union members who pay their membership fees by 'check-off' or Deduction at Source.

Now the reply that came back was very interesting, but before going on to look at some of these issues in more detail here are the original FoI enquiries and subsequent answers from GGCHB.   

1. Please confirm the total number of employees employed by GGCHB? 

NHSGGC employs 39,300 core staff. However we also employ ‘bank’ staff in nursing, admin and other staff groups. These staff may work on an ad hoc basis, or as and when required. Some bank staff may choose not to work for periods of time yet will still be registered on the staff bank. The total number of staff on the payroll including all bank staff is therefore 52,482.


2. Please confirm the total number of employees who pay union contributions through the 'check-off' system which is also known as 'Deduction at Source' (DAS)? 

13770


3. Please confirm the total number of employees who use DAS to pay their union contributions to the Royal College of Nursing (RCN)? 

NONE


4. Please confirm the total number of employees who use DAS to pay their union contributions to Unison?

11335

The first thing that struck me is that the level or 'density' of union membership looks to be much less than I expected because Unison, which always claims to be the largest union in the NHS, has only 11,335 members out of a total workforce of 39,300 or 52,482 if you count all bank staff.

So to put this in percentage terms Unison represents 29% of core staff in GGCHB or 22% of all staff including bank staff.

Now it could be that some of the bank staff pay just one union contribution as a member of core staff, but even so it probably means that Unison represents only around 25% or so of the GGCHB workforce.

The RCN have traditionally operated a direct debit system of collecting membership fees which explains why this 'nurses only' union (Royal College of Nursing) doesn't seem to use the check-off facilities in GGCHB.

But even if the RCN had the same number of members as Unison (which is a big 'if', if you ask me), then this would still leave an awful lot of NHS workers not being a member of any trade union at all.

Because the majority of NHS workers pay their union fees via DAS or checkoff and those 13,770 employees represent 35% of the core workforce or 26% of the total workforce including bank staff.   

All of which suggest that the levels of union membership (across all the trade unions) must struggle to get much beyond 50% which comes as a real surprise to me, I have to say.

So I must go back to GGCHB with some follow up questions.