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One of Britain’s biggest trade unions faces claims of financial mismanagement embroiling the current leadership, amid heavily increased spending on strikes and staffing.
The Unite union’s dispute’s fund – a war-chest for funding strike pay during industrial action and which grew to over £40 million under former General Secretary McCluskey – has been drastically depleted, in part due to high-profile recent disputes such as the long-running Birmingham bin workers’ strike, Byline Times can reveal.
Spending on strike pay and staff wages has soared at the Unite union – while the official regulator has just imposed an unprecedented £5,000 fine for impeding access to financial records.
The union, which covers Britain and Ireland, has over a million members and arguably carries the largest industrial clout, as a union unafraid to strike.
It comes amid a bitter internal row over the union’s finances, after leader Sharon Graham released a report last week alleging cronyism and potential corruption in the union under its former leadership. Graham was elected on a platform focused on winning collective disputes through organising and industrial action, rather than targeting the Labour Party.
But after heavy spending on disputes including the Birmingham bin workers’ walk-out, strike pay from the union is now likely to be pulled from Unite’s ‘general’ fund.
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Under the Bonnet
Every financial quarter for the union over the past year now shows a deficit compared to the union’s income from members, with the union’s substantial investment portfolio no longer providing the gains needed to balance books, as spending on strikes accelerates.
In 2024, the union reported an underlying operational deficit of nearly £20m, according to an internal March 2025 memo. In contrast, in 2020, the union posted an operating surplus of nearly £27 million (though financial accounts for that period are contested).
The union’s internal June 2025 financial report, seen by Byline Times, states: “Dispute payments were £6m in Q4…Branch contributions to disputes remain at a rate of around £0.8m a quarter. The Union can and will make additional payments for disputes from general funds, of which we have plenty, and as we have in the past.”
Spending on disputes also appeared to be running at £6m in the first quarter of this year – strongly suggesting spending will far outstrip the £11.8m which has been budgeted for the whole year.
Internal documents seen by this newspaper show a £5.4m deficit for the union for the first quarter of 2025 alone, up dramatically from a £0.2m deficit in the same period in 2024.
The £5.2m deterioration in just one year suggests a severe downward swing in the union’s finances.
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The June 2025 internal report stated: “Expenditure in Q1 was higher in frontline services, with increases in dispute payments, membership activity and members legal representation costs particularly seeing higher spend than the same period last year. Salary costs are higher than the same period last year, however, they have reduced compared to quarter.”
The union’s strike fund balance was reported in the third quarter of 2024 as £7.7m. Accounting for regular contributions from Unite branches, and dispute fund spending of over £10m since Q3/2024, it would now appear to be totally depleted.
And Unite’s core operations are now significantly loss-making, with an operating deficit (before investments) of £4.6m at the start of the year, up from £4million in Q1 2024. When a recent decline in the value of the union’s investments are taken into account, the total deficit is worse, reaching £5.4m in just one quarter this year.
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Bulging Wage Bill
The leaked finance reports reveal that spending on Unite’s 1,100+ staff (plus over 200 more at its two hotels) ran at £21.5m over the first three months of the year, nearly a million pounds up per quarter from £20.6m in the same period last year.
Following a pay deal announced this February, Unite’s lowest-paid staff are now understood to earn over £40,000, plus the standard 24% employer pension contributions, while all staff enjoy generous benefits including £150/week per child for childcare, a £1,000 “golden hello” for parents of newborns, and a full year of fully-paid maternity pay, as well as eight weeks of full paternity pay for fathers.
“We can’t keep up with our wage bill…That’s why we run a regular deficit,” a senior Unite source said.
The Unite source warned that the current financial situation risked jeopardising the union’s leverage against bad bosses.
Another Unite source, close to the former leadership, said of the strike fund: “Nobody knows [the state of it] because it doesn’t get reported.”
But they criticised the heavy spending on long-running disputes, saying the strike fund was “set up primarily to build up a war chest.”
The war chest now appears to be much-diminished. “National officers tell me the unions broke…[We’re] not flush with money,” they added.
The union has spent over £700,000 on strike pay in the first five months of the year to fuel the Birmingham bin workers’ strike – though spending has been far higher for a strike at Wrexham-based ready meal maker Oscar Mayer Limited, as well as a separate dispute at Bakkavor Foods Limited.
The union recently claimed victory in the Oscar Mayer dispute. Over 500 Unite members at the plant took over 200 days of strike action between September 2024 and April 2025.
The leadership argues the focus on disputes is paying off. Lawyers for Unite said in a legal letter: “Under Ms Graham’s leadership, Unite has refocussed its attention on helping its. members…Of course, such efforts come at a cost, and it is correct that the “disputes fund” is currently depleted.”
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Official warning
But the financial revelations follow a fresh official rebuke for the union, after it failed to provide its latest financial statements to Executive Council members when requested, as required by law.
Just two weeks ago, the Certification Officer imposed a £5,000 fine – understood to be its first financial penalty in 25 years, amid claims the union had obstructed access to its financial statements.
Multiple ongoing complaints from Executive Council members are understood to have been made, seeking financial information from the union via the official regulator. Sharon Graham’s allies contend it is part of a factional attack from Unite Left, which backed Len McCluskey.
In a July ruling, the regulator wrote: “I found that the Union had breached [the complainant’s] right to access the accounting records of the Union on two occasions…[The executive council member] felt unable to fulfil the governance and scrutiny responsibilities he had been elected to carry out.”
The Certification Officer, who found two separate breaches of financial transparency rules within months of each other, added: “The aggravating factors recorded in this decision are extremely serious…I found the occurrence of two breaches in close proximity to be evidence of a pattern of conduct rather than an isolated error.” Unite has played down the ruling, arguing it was an issue of timing.
The official sanctions have received much less attention than the investigation into the hotel commissioned by former General Secretary Len McCluskey, which is the subject of a Serious Fraud Office investigation – with the union accused of paying tens of millions of pounds over the odds for its new Birmingham hotel and conference centre. Perhaps ironically, the hotel is now turning a healthy profit for Unite – supporting the union’s growing wage and dispute bill.
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Running Dry
A press release from Unite last week, on the Birmingham hotel ‘cronyism’ investigation, claimed the union was in a strong financial position and had “liquid assets of over £160 million and a balance sheet of around £400 million.”
Byline Times can reveal that the union’s total cash balances are around £100m, but only around a quarter of that is believed to be immediately accessible in the union’s ‘General Fund. Much of the rest is held in branch accounts, and the union’s £27m-strong political fund, which is meant to be ring-fenced for political campaigning, including Labour donations.
The union does have significant assets, including investments and a substantial property portfolio (including the controversial Birmingham hotel initiated by Len McCluskey) – but these are much harder to shift in the event of a full-blown financial crisis for the organisation.
However, the union’s total balance sheet as of March 2025 was £321 million – making the phrase ‘around £400 million’ appear to be a stretch.
A Unite source critical of the current leadership told Byline Times: “You can’t pay employees’ wages from our stocks and shares…[and] you can’t pay employee wages from money that’s held in branch accounts.”
And they claimed that the depletion of the strike fund meant “we have no leverage left at all.”
“[Soon] we’ll be paying for disputes from the General Fund, which means we’re going back to where we were when Len [McCluskey] took over.
“On a discretionary basis, the union used to pay £15 a day. Len started the dispute fund, piled it up and got it up to paying £70 a day [to all strikers]. He got us on that financial footing.
“It’s not that Len never had disputes…The British Airways dispute [cost] £10 million. But he still piled the dispute fund up to [over] forty million. It was always a Strategic Fund. You have to use it strategically. What you can’t do is spend £4 million on a dispute to achieve £200,000 gains and end up where we were in week one.”
The senior source also said they feared the current Birmingham bin dispute “will go nowhere and we will get the sum total of zero now.”
Multiple major disputes are about to begin, with Unite’s NHS ambulance drivers on the eve of walking out following a consultative ballot of thousands of members, who have expressed an overwhelming desire to walk out over pay. Siemens staff are also expected to walk out soon, while a Veolia refuse dispute in the North of England is ongoing.
Most will get £70 a day in strike pay, but some will get enhanced strike pay of £120. Even at the lower rate, 1,000 members striking costs the union £350,000 for a full five-day walkout.
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HQ Hits Back
Speaking for the union, a senior Unite official claimed the allegations were part of a factional dispute between the leadership and supporters of former leader Len McCluskey.
“Those with much to lose, supported by their allies within the Union, have tried everything in their power to stop the independent investigations commissioned by the current General Secretary, into historical allegations of corruption.
“Those include ongoing police inquiries into alleged historical instances of bribery, fraud and money laundering,” the spokesperson said.
They added: “The campaign of distraction led by supporters of a group linked to the previous leadership, has included paying for online bots to attack the General Secretary and physical threats made outside her family home.”
Strikingly, the spokesperson alleged that ‘an individual’ – presumably intended to mean a source for our story – had ‘falsified’ financial records (they they did not deny the strike fund had been emptied): “[The campaign] has also led to the falsifying of Union accounts by an individual now facing legal action who has been the subject of legal action.”
“Unite will not hesitate to defend itself against those guilty of taking money out of our union and indeed their supporters hell bent on covering up any wrong doing.
“The Union is in a very healthy financial position. Money is now being spent on members, including strike pay, support for negotiations and legal support, and not on suspect building projects or political hobbies. Unite will continue to invest its resources to defend its members.”
Got a story? Get in touch in confidence on josiah@bylinetimes.com
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