By MATHEW DEARNALEY
The country's largest union is slashing death payments to workers' families in favour of a more modest hardship fund.
The 53,500-member Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union has until now paid lump-sum insurance benefits of $4000 to about 90 bereaved families a year.
These were among a range of membership incentives offered during the lean times of the Employment Contracts Act.
Although the engineers union held up better than most, it dipped into reserves to cover more than $5 million of deficits over six years, and has now approved a range of measures to balance its books.
A special conference of union delegates decided that the $370,000 annual cost of the insurance scheme would be better spent organising workers to take advantage of the more union-friendly Employment Relations Act.
In its place will be a hardship fund, to which $30,000 will be allocated each year to help families struggling after the death of a bread-winner.
Other cost-cutting measures include a reduction in the number of union publications and an abolition of membership fee rebates for workplace delegates.
The union came under fire from other Council of Trade Unions affiliates at the CTU's biennial conference last week for allegedly failing to declare its full membership numbers for capitation fees.
The criticism followed its support for a successful bid to delay a proposed 24c increase in the annual capitation fee to $4.40 for each union member until CTU staff can produce evidence next month to justify the rise.
Only 38,000 engineers union members are included in the CTU's latest affiliations list.
But these are fulltime-equivalent figures, and the union says it has paid its dues through other financial contributions.
Union cuts family death payouts
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