By Phil Pickets
THE former Cumbria County Clowncil was among the TOP TEN councils in the country to allow staff on the public payroll to work as full time union officials.
Although being employed as council staff supposedly with jobs to do for local schools and taxpayers, CCC permitted 12 employees on the public payroll to spend ALL of their time on union activities.
Nice work if you can avoid it!
(Union repping used to be a necessary, honest day’s work that you did alongside the day job.)
Increasingly these days, it’s populated by unemployable Far Left recruiting sergeants who spend their days agitating; tying up managers with petty complaints; and finding offence everywhere and in everything.
Cumbria County Council recognised a long list of unions.
The union list included the Association of School and College Leaders; the Fire Brigades’ Union; the Fire Officers’ Association; the Fire and Rescue Services Association; the GMB; the National Association of Headteachers; the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers; the National Education Union; the Community Union; Unison and Unite.
The research was published this summer by The Taxpayers’ Alliance but has just been recirculated.
This is to remind the Labour Government that public sector employees should be, er, working for the public, not the unions that hold the country to ransom, it said.
The TPA found that across 262 councils and organisations in the UK, there was a staggering 5,500 trades union staff.
Their militant activities cost the hard-pressed public purse £33.9 million.
Of this number, more than 1,000 council staff spent ALL of their time in the job on union work.
(This includes 12 staff in Cumbria employed by the old county council.)
As the TPA said: “To be absolutely clear, over 1,000 people employed in roles across the public sector spent none of their time actually doing the jobs they were employed for.”
It’s no wonder rabble-rousers in Cumbria led school teachers out on strike in 2023 – putting parents to trouble and shutting down schools across Workington, Whitehaven, Barrow, Carlisle, Keswick, Ulverston and Penrith, among others.
After mugging for photos in the local media, the Chronic knows of at least one set of striking teachers who then deserted the picket line to meet up en masse at the nearest Wetherspoons, where they spent the morning downing cut-price alcohol and presumably cheering the overthrow of capitalism!
In March this year, council-employed mental health social workers in Cumbria also had a walkout.
Last year, bin collectors in Allerdale caused chaos for residents by starting industrial action in April.
This progressed to all-out strike in May and they did not return to work until 24 August. Stinky bins all round.
Don’t think that because the Tories have been booted out of office means that the unions will settle down.
Far from it. You can expect more strikes in 2025.
Public sector workers, including in the NHS and teaching, are strongly expected to rise up again in protest against a proposed 2.8% pay rise from the Government, which, unions regard as too low.
For some radicals in the lunatic fringe, a 100% wage increase with compulsory two-hour tea breaks and a week off for Lenin’s birthday wouldn’t be enough.
They’d prefer the country to be in a state of permanent strikes as they oppose anyone and everything whoever dares stand in their way on anything at all!
thecumbriachronic.co.uk 
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