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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.”
