NEC Report, meeting held on 8 February 2023
1) Introductions
Obituaries were given. A minute’s silence was held to honour all those former members.
The passing of Jon Rogers was noted, a long-standing member of the NEC who had died a few days ago after a long illness. He will be sadly missed and the Vice-President in the chair who knew Jon gave a moving speech. Many will remember with a smile his amusing speeches at conference and his commitment to fighting for UNISON members. He also had an encyclopaedic knowledge of the history of UNISON and its rulebook.
Best wishes were sent by the NEC to John Jones, NEC member in the WET seat, who is unwell and in hospital.
Sympathy and solidarity was shared for all those in Turkey and Syria killed, injured, bereaved or made homeless and jobless by the earthquake.
Concern was raised that the Greater London Regional Council AGM had been moved to the same day as the NEC meeting, making it impossible for many members to be both at the NEC and accountable to their Region in their regional roles.
2) General Secretary report
Industrial action is taking place in several sectors: Health, Higher Education, WET (Environment Agency). Christina and the NEC sent messages of support to all of them. It was clear that all the strikes have public support and the government has no strategy except more anti-trade union laws. UNISON is challenging the new anti-strike laws in court.
Questions were asked by many NEC members about attempting to coordinate industrial action across UNISON and with other unions. On February 1st there were 500,000 workers on strike and huge demos across lots of towns and cities which raised the morale and confidence of all those on them.
NEC members expressed a desire for more coordination on 15th March budget day when several unions NEU, UCU, etc. had already declared the intention to strike. If we can name the day as soon as possible then those with live ballots can be asked if they want to join; also those branches with massive ‘Yes’ votes but not reaching ballot thresholds can plan to take part in other ways, such as lunch time demonstrations, etc. There was some criticism of the lack of UNISON involvement on February 1st. Some NEC members felt we should stand with all pickets regardless of which union they are from and not criticise other unions’ strikes.
There is a strategy for winning more ballot thresholds. We need to look at messaging to encourage those who will not vote for strike action to vote in any case, as ‘No’ votes help us get over the 50% threshold. There was a TUC meeting today and Gloria Mills was attending for UNISON.
Responses from Christina were that UNISON was not part of February 1st because it is up to local branches and service groups in dispute. There has been no official discussion on March 15th budget day being the next day of action. ‘Coordination’ of strike action does not necessarily mean all striking at the same time, it could be a rolling programme of dates.
Ambulance Services have already agreed dates and 15th March is not in that list, but the week before is. We are asking for more strike pay for those at the bottom of the ambulance pay scales so they can sustain action for longer. It was felt better to do action separately as you get more TV coverage on more days.
Jon Richards (Assistant General Secretary) said the reason we only re-balloted in a few health employers was not because of lack of resources to do so but so that we target those with the best chance of winning. We have to say we are opposed to a general strike because it is unlawful to do otherwise and will be used against us by government. We may see legal action by employers based on public statements made by UNISON reps.
We want to ballot to win and strike to win. Action is isolated and this is a challenge. We need to develop a new strategy, such as that which began in Scotland: more targeted with systematic focus on phone banking and texting, disaggregated basis – we got 9 out of 32 across the line. We generally failed in the NHS. Re-ballots are much smaller. HE re-ballots had very bad outcomes. We need more lay ownership of systems. It is embarrassing that we are not leading the resistance to government attacks on public sector workers. We do have isolated pockets: Manchester Met University is heroically taking action today in a long-running dispute.
Question on how we can support people in Turkey and Syria following the terrible earthquake. Response: UNISON is speaking with unions in Turkey who are trying to launch an appeal but the Turkish government want it to be done through government. Syria is much more difficult as there are no free trade unions. We may be able to coordinate through Kurdish organisations, otherwise we would go through the Disaster Emergency Committee.
Year of Black Workers 2023: we would have special lanyards at national conference. Racism is on rise, fascists are increasingly standing in elections. There is an International Day of Action on Saturday 18th March with protests in all capital cities. UNISON will look to support this.
NHS demo: Save Our NHS / Support the Strikes on 11th March. UNISON is supporting this.
3) Presidential report
In the report there was a reference to National Delegate Conference 2022 and the reports the Presidential Team have received from upset and disillusioned delegates who felt the behaviour was disgusting and totally inappropriate for a UNISON conference. The Presidential Team do not believe that if such behaviour is repeated it should be tolerated this year. Examples included ongoing barracking of delegates speaking at the rostrum, including first-time speakers, and prolonged coordinated disruption of conference.
Some NEC members present complained that the intention to deal with such behaviour in 2023 was a ‘threat’ and intimidating. A Northern Ireland rep said that the Northern Ireland delegation will demonstrate and protest and will not be gagged. Other NEC members stated it was clear that NDC 2023 had been made a toxic event: we need a conference where everyone feels welcomed. We want the Presidential Team and Gen Secretary to work together on how to make this happen in 2023.
One NEC member asked for part of the statement which said she had disagreed with the General Secretary to be withdrawn and an NEC statement to be sent to all regional SOGs. In response, agreement was made to meet with the NEC rep.
NEC reps asked to hear more about a recent trip to Palestine by two NEC members and condemned what is happening there currently and called for UNISON to kickstart its support for the Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions campaign. It was agreed this will happen.
Question on Birmingham Equal pay campaign. Using job evaluation had not been maintained: no equal pay audits had been done. 600,000 won. But in discussions with the council, it is apparent Birmingham want to walk away from the scheme and use the Hay evaluation scheme, which is not appropriate for broad spread of jobs.
4) Motions to National conference
We had initially tried to have a motion on Hong Kong but had to drop this as the NEC is only allowed 12.
12 motions were therefore agreed by the NEC for NDC 2023 as follows:
Iran: Women, Life, Liberty Iran. Motion on the huge protests led by women against laws forcing the wearing of Hijab and also for Human Rights more generally.
Organising and recruitment strategy including plans for and a 10% target for recruiting new reps
Empowering UNISON members – political education courses to encourage participation
Taking effective action within the straitjacket of anti-trade union laws – how to overcome ballot thresholds, training courses on industrial action, learning from experiences.
Climate emergency post-COP27 and decarbonising. Crucial issue as the climate emergency becomes more acute daily.
Health and safety: the national crisis of stress and its impact on public sector workers.
Crisis in NHS and Social Care – urgent as services are increasingly broken with 600+ deaths a week due to delayed admissions.
Childcare, women and economic growth. UK has the highest childcare costs in world. Free childcare would boost economy by £13 billion.
Retained EU law and attack on workers’ rights. The clock could be turned back decades – removing protections on leave, TUPE, pregnancy, anti-discrimination, etc.
Defend the Right to Strike – new Minimum Services Thresholds Bill will deprive us of the right to strike.
Local Government and devolution
Effective use of our union’s resources to build our Industrial Action Fund and capacity to deliver effective industrial action.
Only Motion 12 received any significant debate on the day. Given this, we will publish separately the full motion and the discussion had at the Finance Committee of the NEC which agreed the motion.
On Motion 12, Effective use of our union’s resources to build our Industrial Action Fund and capacity to deliver effective industrial action, all NEC members agreed we need to grow our union to defend members. We need to support effective industrial action and that this is patchy at the moment, as we had heard previously in the meeting. We want to be able to do this better but need resources to improve. Some branches have very high reserves e.g. £250+ per member, which are never utilised. The union had a couple of exceptional years during the pandemic where reserves increased due to lower activity than usual. The motion proposes a one-off investment due to the current cost-of-living crisis, to use resources from those branches with the very highest reserves (over £113 per member), and this amount will be matched by national cash-in-hand reserves. The money will be put in to strengthen the Industrial Action Fund and projects to make us better able to meet ballot thresholds and take the action needed to win, such as rapid response teams to support industrial action in regions, improvements to phone and text infrastructure, etc. It still leaves those branches affected (197 out of 840) with very significant reserves of £113 per member.
As the government digs in we need to win more ballots to defend members’ pay, terms and conditions. Some NEC members argued we needed to postpone and wait. Others said we need urgently to improve our capacity to take action. In the North West, NEC delegates reported their own disputes team that mobilises support for any branch that faces possible industrial action and which has won many ballots as a result. It has never been more important for branches to be able to take action. There is money out there in a minority of branches’ reserves which got much bigger during the pandemic. This would be a better use for that money than sitting in accounts with little interest and where it will never get spent. One NEC member was concerned if other unions do deliver positive ballot results and UNISON cannot. This could destabilise UNISON in the long-term if members leave for other unions. One teaching union had reported huge numbers of joiners since being the only teaching union to get over the threshold. Some NEC members stated UNISON should not have increased strike pay to £50 per day.
The motion was carried by 27 votes for, 15 against.
5) Rules changes to national conference
Non-gendered language to be applied throughout the rule book.
Honorary life membership: clarity that when nominated, members need to be in full membership.
All branches and UNISON meetings can be online, hybrid or face-to-face, which will enable branches who have not amended their own rules to hold online/hybrid meetings if they wish regardless of their own branch rules. (Best practice meeting protocols will be produced advising how to hold online/hybrid meetings.)
GDPR – all branch officers must do mandatory GDPR training within 3 months of taking office. There was some debate as whether this is in proportion to the level of risk and concern about what happens if officers do not do the training. Will officers be told they cannot be offices? Is it discriminatory towards low-paid workers, without facility time, who more likely to be female and Black? Carried 28 for, 10 against.
GDPR – the branch secretary must ensure the branch is compliant (this is an update to an existing rule).
6) Disciplinary issues
Agreed report.
7) Staffing report
Noted.
8) UNISON staff pensions
UNISON needs to pay into the Government pension protection scheme, a contingency plan all pension schemes pay into. We are using the UNISON centre as an asset to qualify for a saving on the levy. This saving has increased recently due to improvements in the position of UIA.
9) Finance update
The 2022 end of year management accounts were reported. These are still draft figures, which will be finalised fully in April. UNISON had a larger deficit budget than planned for, reflecting increased costs post pandemic, but particularly payroll costs for staff, and other inflationary costs.
Subs income was £172.6m, which was in line with budget but £2 million less than in 2021 (where membership had increased due to anxieties over Covid).
The end of year predicted deficit is £4.8 million (£2.7 million budgeted for) due mainly to Payroll costs. UNISON had budgeted for a 2% staff pay increase but the eventual settlement was much greater than this. Additional pension costs are also a key factor in additional expenditure.
UNISON had some savings from reduced costs: training held online, overhead costs reduced in regions, advertising budget was underspent.
UNISON also had some unanticipated overspends in some departments. The Finance Committee has discussed these and has asked for greater controls so that spending over agreed budgets is signed off formally on each occasion it happens, either by the Director of Finance, or the Finance Committee itself.
The NEC looked at projections for 2023-25. If Payroll grows at a time membership income is static or drops, this is problematic for the union. We need a long-term strategy for our Finances as the previous approach of ‘trimming back’ each year has now run out of road. Nevertheless, we are generally in a good financial state, with good reserves but need to develop a long-term strategy.
10) Organising update
185,000 new members had joined in 2022, the strongest areas being in Health and Scotland. Young member joiners are up 65%, which is a very positive trend.
UNISON ended 2022 with 4,000 new members net growth.
Biggest growth comes where ballots have taken place. Movement and peer to peer texting made a real difference.
Big gains are made where we are strategically organising e.g. NHS band 2 to band 3 campaigns.
Activist base – we had 2,279 new activists but overall it is a net loss.
11) Pay
Much of this was already covered in detail in the General Secretary’s earlier report and discussion.
Schools: £130m won in Term Time Only campaign. Case against NEU at TUC will be heard tomorrow.
Some NEC members expressed the need to draw in the mass of workers not currently on strike in health and local government, if we are to win on pay. There was a debate on the role of strike action and differing views expressed.
The meeting ended.
Report ends.