In this time of public service cuts and a reduction of money being given to councils to spend on front-line services, why do the UK taxpayers pay for public sector workers to work full time on union activity yet still get paid by their employers? If they are doing full time work for the union shouldn't the union be paying them and allow the public body they are "working" to hire someone who will actually be doing work for that body?

Because someone has to look after the rights of workers, and as a society who appears to want to care about the rights of man, that means all of us.

The Tories want to shut the Unions down. They want to remove the right to industrial action, and they want to take away as many workers’ rights as they can get away with. We saw Vince Cable, who has been drinking Tory KoolAid, threatening the GMB the other day.

Hell yes!!!

Unions can pay their own workers, it's not the tax payers job to pay them.

When I was a union member, I paid subs out of my wages; twas a very small amount though.

I thought this was the case everywhere.

You also forget that they also resolve dispiutes for the council with out them resorting to strikes, plus the council HR would have to deal with many of these issues anyway so it saves them money in that respect.