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Top-level
 @glitzersachen @doctormo The UK. For example, an employee, not necessarily knowing who's best placed to answer a query, might go to their union rep rather than their line manager or HR to ask "How do I ...? How does ... work? What would happen if ...?" and if the union happens to know the right answer then that saves HR and/or management time. (Of course the union will signpost them on when appropriate, eg if they don't know the answer or it's not their business to give it.) 8 comments
It's not the "giving people information on HR issues" part I am concerned about, but rather the dependency created by a payment. From my union I actually expect to provide a certain amount of counseling. @glitzersachen @doctormo That seems to be how it works. It worked OK in the only organisation in which I was involved in such things. @glitzersachen @doctormo Yes. A small district council. In my day (this may well have changed) two reps from different unions were each paid half time to do their day jobs and half time to look after their union members. Which included things like working on the union side of some non-trivial restructuring deals. I think this would not be called "being paid for doing HR's job". It's typical that union reps from the employees are still employed 100%, but get leave to handle union business (or worker's council business) for a certain percentage of their time ("freigestellt" in German, but I cannot find an equivalent, maybe "released for", but this sounds fishy to my ears). Their work contract (at least in DE) don't change which avoids part of the dependency problem. Also note that commercial enterprises and organisations on the government / local admin side are typically rather different beasts. At least in Germany the laws also partly differ. |
Gregory's Server
@glitzersachen @doctormo Particularly if the union rep is on the shop floor, the line manager is always in meetings, and HR is on a different site.