Trade Union Facilities

Conference notes motion 16 passed at NDC conference 2016 instructed the NEC to: “Work with Labour Link to campaign to defend facility time, briefing individual elected politicians at all levels, developing model motions for councils – making it clear that attacked on facility time are particularly unacceptable from Labour councils – and pushing for debates […]

Crisis in Local Government

Local Government and local services are at crisis point. Demands and expectations of services are increasing year on year while finances are dwindling. Local authorities provide the glue that hold society together; either through lifelong education, wellbeing, transportation, refuse or social care to name but a few. Services that every person uses at some point, […]

Local Government Apprentices

Conference acknowledges there will be considerable growth in the number of apprentices employed in local government as a result of the apprenticeship levy, as well as the provisions of the Enterprise Act around apprenticeship targets for public sector bodies. Conference recognises the good practice that exists in some local government branches, who not only recruit […]

Public Housing Post Grenfell

Conference notes that the Grenfell Tragedy has transformed discussion about the housing crisis. Grenfell was an avoidable tragedy created by more than 30 years of political decisions to cut, deregulate and privatise across housing and public safety which has included: 1)Cutting investment in council and social housing; 2)Privatising Council Housing stock through stock transfer and […]

Make 2019 the Year of Young Workers

Conference believes that the strength and sustainability of UNISON depends on the recruitment and organisation of young workers, and their development as activists and leaders. Conference notes, however, that while UNISON has had some measure of success in recruiting young workers, their numbers have remained at around 5% of the membership, and less than 2% […]

Intergenerational Commission

This conference rejects the proposals contained in the Resolution Foundation think tank’s report of the intergenerational Commission, chaired by Lord David Willetts (nicknamed Two Brains), titled “A New Generational Contract”. Conference further rejects the myth of generational unfairness on which the report is founded, and which masks the fact that the real unfairness is based […]

WINDRUSH

Conference is appalled at the Windrush scandal and the treatment of too many of the British citizens affected. In particular Conference is concerned for the many retired people and pensioners caught up in this controversy whose status and rights as British citizens have been erroneously called into question. Conference recalls that Caribbean people were invited […]

Misogyny is hate crime

Misogyny and hate crime is on the increase in society. In 2016 Nottinghamshire police were the first force to re-classify wolf whistling, cat calling and other misogynistic harassment as hate crime and handled 30 cases in 5 months. Following on from that 15 other police forces are now looking at following Nottinghamshire Police’s lead. In […]

Getting the balance right on the NEC

Conference notes that in 2017 national women’s conference carried a motion calling for the NWC to work with the NEC to address the issue of proportionality in our union. 1 million of UNISON’s 1.3 million members are women – 77% of the total membership. Conference further notes that UNISON’s currently has 66 seats, comprised of […]

Carers – The forgotten members

1 in 8 adults or 6.5 million people in the UK are carers according to carers UK with this figure set to rise to 9 million by 2037. Every day 6,000 people take on a caring role and 58% of the careers are women. In 2011, females were more likely to be unpaid carers than […]

Low Pay and Women in UNISON

UNISON’s principles of proportionality and fair representation means that some seats on elected bodies, including the NEC, are reserved for women and low-paid members, so that the make-up fairly represents the wider union. We have a variety of places where low paid seats exist, and low pay is included in branch delegations to national delegate […]