Branch Secretary News – UNISON College: September 2025

Three ways to use learning to organise

  • Opening the door

Learning can be a great way to open the conversation. You can direct members to our offer, and point non-members to our programme as an example of an immediate benefit of joining UNISON. If your branch has members in social care, for example, you can use our professional development webinar series as a talking point. [https://learning.unison.org.uk/events/tag/social-care/] And, no matter what service group you’re in, there’ll be something for your members during our Financial Wellbeing Week, 10-14 November [https://learning.unison.org.uk/events/tag/financial-wellbeing-week/].

Or you could organise some bite-sized learning in the branch to raise your profile.

  • Organising around learning needs

Learning can be an organising issue in itself: is there some key training that members in your branch aren’t getting from their employer? You can organise around that – it’s often a widely-felt, winnable issue! Or maybe your current organising project has exposed some training needs within your activist base.

  • Building organising skills in your branch

Union learning isn’t a ‘one and done’ kind of thing. We keep on learning, developing our skills through practice and through further training. Read on to find out about training for your reps, your branch officers – and yourself.

Branch officer training

Most of UNISON’s regions and devolved nations have held their branch officer training over the summer. But if some of your officers have missed out, we have some nationally-organised training coming up this autumn and winter:

Training for representatives

Trained, confident stewards, health and safety reps and union learning reps are the backbone of our workplace organisation. Across UNISON College, regional education teams [https://learning.unison.org.uk/regional-education-teams/] have classroom-based training running in this last quarter of the year, and are beginning to publish their programmes for 2026. Nationally, we are running online training for stewards/workplace reps [https://learning.unison.org.uk/events/online-stewards-october-december-2025/] (a largely self-guided course with tutor support, beginning 27 October) and health and safety reps [https://learning.unison.org.uk/events/health-and-safety-online-autumn-2025/] (17-21 November).

Advanced employment law

There are still places on our Age Discrimination Law course on 13 November [https://learning.unison.org.uk/events/advanced-employment-law-age-discrimination-2025/]. This recent addition to our annual programme of advanced employment law courses is a must for anyone who undertakes complex casework. It will equip you to identify potential age discrimination cases, understand the law around discrimination, and discuss the issue confidently and sensitively with your members

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