- Conference
- 2025 National Delegate Conference
- Date
- 25 February 2025
- Decision
- Carried as Amended
Being a branch officer and being able to support your colleagues is undoubtedly a privileged position and one that can be extremely rewarding. However, anecdotally we hear that many branch officers, particularly workplace stewards and branch secretaries are suffering from burn out. Workloads are high but not measured or capped, casework is complex and often have a heavy emotional load and, in many branches, there are simply not enough activists to do all the work. And the reality of the work that we do in our workplaces is listen to problems, support demanding situations, and challenge decisions, all things which take an emotional toll. Reps do not have the support of their line managers from their substantive posts in these situations and regional UNISON support is not tailored to the emotional needs of our branch officers. It is our view that there is a gap in UNISON provision for meeting the emotional well-being of activists.
This motion calls on the National Executive Council to undertake further investigation into this topic by means of a survey of all activists to understand if there is a gap in provision. If the outcome indicates that there is a gap, that resource should be allocated to develop a service that can support our activists in being able to support emotional and physical well being.