Legal support for our members and activists: getting it right

This Conference accepts that the legal services available to our activists through UNISON’s main contract with a legal services supplier are of crucial importance. The quality, accuracy and timeliness of our legal support to members makes our reputation as a union, supports individual and collective gains for UNISON members, and helps to build power in our workplaces. 

However, Conference recognises that UNISON’s delivery of legal advice and support to our activists and members through this external contract is due for review. 

Conference recognises a general concern amongst activists that in regards to this main legal services contract:

• It is getting harder to take cases for members and that merit thresholds can sometimes be a barrier  

• Legal advice requests are more often than not steered through the Regional Office as gatekeepers  

• When activists do try to access the legal advice helpline directly this can be a time-consuming process and not always be successful  

• The 28-day turnaround to provide written legal advice can make negotiations and bargaining for members difficult at times  

• Branch secretaries and other key activists have over time become deskilled, no longer having the requirement to engage directly with UNISON’s legal services or support members at Tribunals  

• There is an ongoing need for timely and responsive legal advice to branch secretaries at key points of collective and individual negotiations  

• Members increasingly expect to receive legal advice within their cases due to UNISON marketing this service as part of its ‘offer’ to new members. 

This Conference also notes there is increasingly a need to ‘have activists’ backs’. Our activists put themselves and their careers on the line for our members. When they are victimised or harassed by their employer for carrying out their trade union duties, activists need to know that their union will support them. The decision to provide legal support should be based on principle not probable success. Conference believes that there is a case to explore and review the criteria applied when deciding whether to provide legal support for activists who assert they are being victimised or harassed by their employer for carrying out trade union duties. 

Therefore, this Conference calls on the NEC to institute a review of UNISON’s legal services contract to see if more responsive and dynamic legal services can be developed, taking account of the above issues. This review should conclude by the end of 2022 and its findings and any actions taken be reported back to NDC 2023.