NEC Report, meeting held on 16 June 2023

The newly-elected NEC met for the first time on Friday 16 June straight after national conference ended.

Keen followers of the elections will be aware the results were mixed with several surprise wins and defeats, and several long-standing NEC members had stood down. So almost half of the NEC are now brand-new representatives.  Time for Real Change remain the largest group on the NEC.  The Time for Real Change group now has 32 seats, the Socialist Party with 1 seat, the Unison Unity group* with 29 seats, and 5 independents.

The first NEC meeting is solely to elect the 3 members of the Presidential Team who in Unison’s constitution are the honorary (unpaid) principal officers of the NEC, who work alongside the General Secretary (the employed principal officer)

So, this meeting was to decide who the NEC supports for the presidential team for the next year. For the third year in a row Time for Real Change supporters were elected by the NEC as the presidential team.  

The votes cast were as follows:

President – Libby Nolan (existing Vice President and Cymru/Wales Region female seat) – 35 votes to 32

Senior VP – Steve North (North West region male seat) 35 to 32

Junior VP – Julia Mwaluke (Black Members’ reserved female seat) 34 to 33

The next full meeting of the NEC on Friday 14 July will be to agree membership of the all the NEC committees which lead much of the work and carry out policy and crucially the Chairs and Vice chairs of these committees. 

*Some of those which have been reported to be part of the Unison Unity slate, state they are not a formal group or slate. But there was publicity circulated clearly promoting them as a group of candidates. We welcome support and cooperation from all NEC members in the two years ahead.