Report from Finance & Resource Management Committee meeting 02/02/23
The meeting had one agenda item, to discuss and seek to agree the following Motion: “Effective use of our union’s resources to build our Industrial Action Fund and capacity to deliver effective industrial action.”
Rationale for motion
Branch and national reserves increased significantly during the pandemic. We are facing an unprecedented attack on our members from the government and employers. We are forced into trying to take more industrial action than we have taken in a long time. We have balloted a large percentage of our members. We want to ensure that we can support these members when we take industrial action. We know many ballots produced massive ‘Yes’ votes for action but did not pass the 50% threshold to have a lawful strike. We also want to be able to cross the 50% threshold in more branches and know this will involve resources.
We propose to use the excess reserves identified from the national union and branches with general reserves above £113 per member at the end of the 2021 financial year to strengthen the national Industrial Action Fund to allow for greater use of strike pay and to resource additional activity to support winning ballots, such as rapid response teams to support branches to organise disputes in regions.
This will not impact all branches, only those with more than £113 per member in reserves at end of 2021 financial year. It will impact 197 out of 840 branches who have more than £113 per member as at end of 2021. This money will be used to enable us to win more ballots as well as to support members with strike pay when out on strike.
The motion was unanimously agreed and is printed below.
Members of UNISON NEC and Finance Committee are available to come to national and regional committees, national and regional service groups, SOGs, and branches to explain the motion. Materials will be coming out explaining the proposals. If you have any questions do not hesitate to contact your NEC member or invite us to your branch meeting.
Motion
Effective use of our union’s resources to build our Industrial Action Fund and capacity to deliver effective industrial action
Conference notes the scale of the cost-of-living crisis facing UNISON members. There can be no doubt that our union – and the wider labour movement to which we belong – is engaged in a battle with a government determined to force workers to bear all the costs of their broken system, while their friends and donors reap all the benefits. In these circumstances, we need to be able to utilise all our power to defend our members, the services they provide and the communities they support. As a trade union, a key test of our ability to do so depends on the extent to which we can deliver effective industrial action. We have seen some brave and brilliant examples within our union of what we can achieve when our members come together to take industrial action, but we must recognise that we can do more, particularly when it comes to national disputes and coordinating action across branches. An effective union is one that can meet its challenges collectively and the biggest challenges we face can only be won by us acting in large numbers across regions, nations and service groups.
Conference also notes that in 2022 it passed Motion 109: ‘Taking effective industrial action under current legal restrictions’. This committed our union to: investigating effective use of digital communications to maximise one to one conversations with members at all stages of balloting periods; developing a whole union approach to maximise resources dedicated to industrial action ballots, including ensuring UNISON is ‘ballot ready’ with continuous cleansing of member records; and ensuring member training and education programmes encompass how we can organise to overcome restrictive anti-trade union legislation.
Just as our branches face multiple challenges from the Tory’s cost-of-living crisis to defend our members, branches have also faced the ‘once in a generation’ challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic. This Conference recognises the incredible efforts made by branches to support our members during the pandemic. Wholesale adaptation of how we worked took place at speed. The flexibility of branches in delivering support, advice and organisation to members at this time showed what is best about our union. The contribution of every single part of our union is also recognised by this conference: when we pull together, our union can ‘fight its weight’ and act like the biggest union in the UK.
This Conference also recognises another phenomenon of the Covid-19 pandemic which took effect in 2020 and 2021. This was the significant underspend of both branch and national budgets caused by the pandemic. Routine expenses incurred by branches and the national office did not occur. Giving only two examples, no physical national delegate conference took place in either 2020 or 2021; and branch committee meetings were largely virtual, reducing travel costs.
As a result, both branches and the national union added significantly to their reserves in 2020 and 2021. Our union’s general reserves are intended to meet unexpected running costs that might be incurred over the course of a year. Conference accepts this definition of general reserves, and so accepts the distinction between other types of reserves set aside in industrial action and property funds. Conference affirms that the exponential increase of general reserves at either branch or national level is not an aim or objective of UNISON.
This Conference accepts that members’ subs are collected first and foremost to support and organise our members, so we can increase our density and power in workplaces and our communities. Members’ subs lying dormant in bank accounts, being added to year on year and attracting negligible levels of interest, serves no purpose at a time of crisis for our members.
Conference further notes that in 2020, those branches which already had more than £20.40 per member in reserves (or £11,200 in total for branches with up to 500 members) added an additional £7,808,201 to their general reserves above the £20.40 per member level. In all likelihood this huge resource will never be used for members’ benefit. In 2021 similarly, our branches which already had more than £20.40 per member in Reserves (or £11,200 in total for branches with up to 500 members) added a further £4,856,878 to their general reserves.
In 2020, our national union added £5,331,000 to its general reserves. In 2021, our national union further added £12,020,000 to its general reserves. Conference accepts however that only a portion of the national union’s increase in general reserves were ‘cash in bank’ reserves: the greater portion of this increase in general reserves accumulated in these years were necessarily committed against future expenditure and investment in the union’s infrastructure e.g. £4.2 million was set aside for the union’s Digital Engagement Project to improve and coordinate our digital communication with members. ‘Cash in bank’ general reserves across the two Covid years of 2020 and 2021 equalled £5,125,000.
These substantial sums combined represent a huge opportunity. This Conference agrees that some of those members’ subs should now be put to use: to build our capacity to deliver effective industrial action. We know from experience that where we can demonstrate the ability to take effective industrial action our membership will increase as a result. Investment in strike capacity is therefore sound investment in the growth of our union and its income, as well as being vital to defending our members’ terms and conditions and the services they provide.
This Conference recognises that our National Executive Council has taken helpful first steps in 2021 and 2022 to modernise our national Industrial Action Fund. The NEC’s Industrial Action Committee has approved the increase of strike pay from £25 to £50 per day, payable from day one of action and not day four. However, Conference accepts we must make other changes now to bring UNISON’s industrial action capacity into the twenty-first century. A significant increase in funds for the national Industrial Action Fund, alongside a refocussing of union resources towards delivering successful ballot outcomes will support this objective and send a signal to bad employers and this Tory government that UNISON means to defend its members during the cost-of-living crisis and beyond.
To this end our union should also use these additional resources to:
ensure accuracy of the membership system including continuous, pro-active cleansing and checking of member and employer records (if we don’t have the right data at the outset of a dispute we are already hampered in delivering positive ballot outcomes);
provide additional resources to enable the national Strategic Organising Unit and twelve regions to develop dedicated disputes organising capacity;
make additional capital investment in technological systems ‘to get out the vote’ – expanding the Movement system to be more responsive and allow for improved targeting of members;
deliver a union-wide, mandatory ‘strike ready’ training programme over the next 12 months.
Conference affirms that the most significant challenges that we face can only be successfully overcome if every part of the union works together effectively. We are one trade union and so Conference wishes to see a ‘whole union’ approach taken to this essential task of developing our union’s capacity to deliver effective industrial action. This would mean a principle of ‘match funding’ between branches, in this instance those with the very highest levels of general reserves, and the national union. The branches with the very highest reserves should contribute £5,125,000 to equal the cash in bank general reserves contribution from the national union of £5,125,000, totalling a sum of £10,250,000.
Conference therefore resolves to instruct the NEC to use the excess reserves identified from the national union and branches with general reserves above £113 per member at the end of the 2021 financial year to:
boost the finances available within the national Industrial Action Fund to allow for greater use of strike pay and to give confidence to members that their union can support them and to send a signal to bad employers and government that UNISON means to defend its members;
provide additional resources to ensure accuracy of the membership system including continuous, pro-active cleansing and checking of member and employer records;
provide additional resources to enable the national Strategic Organising Unit and twelve regions to develop dedicated disputes organising capacity;
make additional capital investment in technological systems ‘to get out the vote’ – expanding the Movement system to be more responsive and allow for improved targeting of members;
deliver a union-wide, mandatory ‘strike ready’ training programme over the next 12 months.
For branches this will mean general reserves accumulated above the rate of £113 per member will be used to create a sum of £5,125,000 from branches to match £5,125,000 from the national union, which will total a £10,250,000 investment in our Industrial Action Fund and capacity to deliver effective industrial action. Following this transfer from branches with general reserves accumulated above the rate of £113 per member, such branches will maintain their general reserves at no less than £113 per member. No branch with less than 500 members will have general reserves of less than £11,200.
Conference instructs the NEC to monitor and review the implementation of this motion and provide a full report back to Conference in 2024.