NEC report, meeting held on 20 May 2026
1. General Secretary report
Our General Secretary, Andrea Egan, presented her comprehensive written report to the NEC which included the fallout from the local elections, combatting Reform UK, the Migrant Worker Day of Action (Fair Visa campaign), various events and meetings including the Strategic Manifesto Delivery Group.
Andrea spoke about:
Her work building relationships with other trade unions and working with them on joint initiatives where it makes sense to do so, such as insourcing.
Her meeting with Bridget Philipson, Education Secretary, alongside Jo Grady from the UCU and HESGE lay co-chair Ivan Bonsell.
Her being in role now for 16 weeks and wanting to work across all groups, sectors and committees in partnership. She will look at the format of NEC meetings to make them more productive and would want, after NDC, for there to be planning discussions about the year ahead.
Questions were asked as follows by NEC members:
An NEC member from the Police, Probation & CAFCASS service group queried the legislation to prohibit branded school uniforms as this would be better for members during the cost of living. The scope of this legislation was confirmed and UNISON’s role in pushing for it.
An NEC member from the Energy service group welcomed the positive announcement from HM Treasury in tax-free mileage rates increasing to 55 pence. She confirmed she was pleased to see the establishment of the Strategic Manifesto Delivery Group and looked forward to seeing the work that comes from it.
An NEC member from the NW Region asked a question about a potential review of our links with the Labour Party. They also flagged that insufficient staffing resources had been allocated to the NJC ballot with only 1 or 2 branches being targeted per region. The GS has made representations to attend an NJC Committee meeting and to meet the chairs of our NJC Committee and its officers. She would take up concerns about the lack of target branches and stated their may be scope to work with other NJC Unions to identify and share the targeting of branches.
The GS responded that it was not in her gift to disaffiliate from Labour. She had been working hard to hold the Labour Party’s feet to the fire through the press and through TULO work with the other affiliated General Secretaries. It is clear that Keir Starmer cannot stay in power as PM, Andrea reported to the NEC, and also she understands that the National Labour Link Committee is committed to the widest possible consultation with members if there is a leadership contest. [It should be noted that the National Labour Link Committee endorsed Keir Starmer’s leadership bid without a full member consultation, and that has not served us well as a model to follow.] The GS was meeting with the National Labour Link Committee (NLLC) the following day and would pick up the previously communicated intention of the former Vice-Chair of that Committee to see what regular reports can be provided by the NLLC to the NEC.
Jim McFarlane from Scotland raised a similar point on the Labour Party and pointed to the national elections in Wales and Scotland and called for a debate on our links with Labour as less than 14% of our members currently contribute to Labour Link. Jim also called for it to be clearer when communicating to members that decisions made by Labour Link, for example who to support in a leadership election, are theirs alone and not made by the whole union. Jim thanked Andrea for attending the Scottish TUC Conference.
Antonia Bright from a National Black Members seat reported that 24 Universities are on the brink of insolvency with 26 more in a similar position. The Government’s attacks on migration have reduced International student numbers, further undermining the HE sector. She called for the Government to underwrite Universities.
An NEC member representing Young Members highlighted the concerns over Labour’s increased spending on militarisation and queried how the Union could make a better case for welfare, not warfare. The GS stated that we must look at our Union’s workplans to make campaigns more effective. [This will be debated under Motion 41 at Conference.]
In response to a question about the Employment Rights Act, Andrea was clear that we need an ERA Mark 2, as we did not get all that we want from this legislation first time round. She has appointed an (existing) Assistant General Secretary to oversee the entirety of the ERA work the Union undertakes and they will provide henceforth a weekly update to the Union’s Executive Leadership Team, and will also look at how we best push for an ERA Mark 2.
2. Presidential Team report
The Presidential Team presented a report on their recent activity including visits to the North West and to a Get Active event in the South West, the launch of a low paid members network.
Jayne Bouskill, a Reserved-seat NEC member from Yorkshire & Humberside queried how she can get involved in the low paid members network and was advised to contact her Region.
3. Political Fund Working Group
We received an update from the working group including a draft proposal that they are looking at. A specially-convened meeting of the Campaign Fund Committee had approved the amended version of the new rules at its meeting on 20th April. The Labour Link Forum would consider the proposals in July. They would then come back to the NEC in October.
This complex document of vital importance to the Union was circulated at 7.58am on the morning of the NEC meeting, in clear contravention of the NEC’s governance standards and access standards. It was 12 pages long.
NEC members variously commented:
The document was not easy to understand and was unclear
That without any financial or other modelling, how could we be in a position to draft procedures for our political funds and subscriptions.
That the paper was unsatisfactory and the NEC deserved better to inform its debates and scrutiny
That we needed to see the associated communications approaches to members to make a decision, but these were not supplied
Why did we have a target date of January 2027 and were not instead waiting for NDC 2027 to take a decision of this importance after debate in June, in line with our expected democratic procedures. [The initial response to this specific point was that we were getting ‘pressure’ from the Certification Officer to resolve this matter as soon as possible.]
This timeline was putting unnecessary pressure on the NEC. We needed to see all the evidence, options and implications, and this had not happened so far.
The Vice-President accepted criticism regarding the lateness of the paper. He stated it was for the Campaign Fund committee (of which he is a member) to comment on why they felt able to approve the proposals on 20th April, and to account for what information they had at their disposal to take this decision, and why it was not supplied to the NEC on 8th April. The working group would ‘look again’ at providing a guide to members on the procedures. He also confirmed that the political fund was currently operating outside of the Employment Rights Act 2025, but there was little risk to us as the Certification Officer had confirmed, but that we i.e. UNISON wish to make the changes as soon as possible. The Vice-President did confirm we had been given no timeline for compliance by the Certification Officer.
It remained unclear if the NEC approve the proposals in October 2026 whether they would still need to come to NDC 2027.
The Assistant General Secretary with responsibility for this area gave assurance to the NEC that these matters were under control and we would have time to give the matter due diligence and scrutiny in October. The whole matter had now been put under a single officer, which would assist.
The General Secretary confirmed she had heard the concerns of some NEC members very clearly. She had received a complaint from an NEC member following the previous discussion of our Political Funds in April. She will deal with the complaint and come back to the NEC, and will address the concerns raised.
4. National Delegate Conference 2026
Concerns were raised by Stuart Graham from Scotland about the NEC continuing to use The Grand Hotel. It was confirmed by the relevant Assistant General Secretary that the Union was committed there until the end of 2027 without an available break clause. A unilateral cancellation would cost the Union several hundreds of thousands of pounds. The Presidential Team would come to a decision today. An NEC member representing Black members hoped that lessons would be learned for our contracting and that appropriate break clauses would be included in contracts in future.
The NEC discussed some policy changes on motions, i.e. our position on various motions and amendments. James Anthony, Vice-President, asked the NEC to change its original position of ‘Support’ on Motion 85 “Energy For All: a Free National Energy Allowance”. This was reported as being to allow the Energy SGE time to consider the Motion again.
Dan Sartin, South East representative, argued against this on the grounds that the NEC had already expressed its Support once, that the motion covered a citizenship issue with energy prices being a massive cost of living issue for our members (much larger even than the concerns raised over the cost of school uniforms at the start of the meeting), and that UNISON should not end up like Unite unconditionally supporting the arms industry just because some members work in the industry. Dan reported that the Motion had already been to the Energy SGE and they didn't take a view on it and had decided not to meet again to discuss it. The West Midlands region has prioritised the motion, so why would the NEC change our previous position of Support?
The NEC voted to change its position to Defer.
5. Organising Report
Membership growth at the time of the meeting had reduced to 1,490 members (growth of 0.1% when we have a target of 1.0%). Without room for complacency, and with Schools still a major challenge for us, it was suggested by the presenting Officer that with Local Government NJC data cleansing now complete, with ballot activity still to come on NJC Pay and NHS Pay, and the rollout of the new Member Engagement Project, there were good reasons to be optimistic about membership over the next few months.
We received a report on the 2026 Organising Framework outcomes, and confirmation that each region and branch should have received feedback. We also received updates on activist recruitment, Organising to Win projects and the Branch Support and Organising Fund.
A question was raised by Dave Jones from the North West as to how we could encourage more branch BSOF bids.
Corinna Edwards-Colledge from the South East raised that her branch could make use of the BSOF fund given it has 34 open collective change processes with many members’ jobs at risk. Corinna called for BSOF guidance to be reviewed to make it easier to access and use, and highlighted the passages on branch reserves as being off-putting to branches considering bids.
6. Industrial action update
Tom Barker, a delegate from the East Midlands currently involved in a dispute with their employer over his own victimisation as a trade union rep, reported that the Industrial Action Committee was not responding to his branch’s requests in a timely way. The branch had issued notice of strikes weeks before they were due and made a request for full strike pay given the exceptional nature of the dispute, but the chair and vice-chair of the Industrial Action Committee had not responded until 3pm the day before the strike was due. Tom reported that their request for full strike pay was approved but the lateness of the decision cut across the effectiveness of the action as it caused uncertainty amongst members. This lateness of decision-making happened again when a second request was submitted, with a response from the chairs again coming the day before the action was planned to take place. (This time however, the request for full strike pay was denied.) The delegate asked why these mistakes of process were repeated and asked how these matters could be improved for the future.
Mark Wareham from the South West, who was in favour of the request for full strike pay noted that we should give full support to members acting to support our union and who would gain no direct pecuniary benefit from a successful outcome to the dispute.
A proposal from Dave Jones from the North West for the NEC to grant full strike pay support for our members in this dispute (an employer with low numbers) until the end of the school year in July 2026 was ruled out of order by the President on the grounds that the proposal had not been heard first by the relevant Committee of the NEC. The vote did not take place. This was interesting as later in the meeting, the NEC would be asked by the President to take a decision on a matter that had not been discussed first by the relevant committee of the NEC.
The General Secretary told the NEC that the message had been heard that the Union needs to be more responsive to industrial action requests. The chair of the Industrial Action Committee recommitted herself to the normal processes being followed”, notwithstanding that these had been found wanting as described on two previous occasions.
7. Finance and Resources
It was reported that we are £0.4M ahead of budget for subscription income and currently have a surplus on the year of £1.7M. These were figures for the first quarter so should be treated with caution as we are reporting only on the earliest phase of the budget year.
The Financial Statements for 2025 were reported and endorsed by the NEC and will now be considered by National Delegate Conference. Stuart Graham from Scotland asked about unusual and very high property dilapidation costs of £628K and this was reported to be accounted for by the Union having to accept a cheaper offer for a regional building we were selling. This would be a one-off event.
8. Staffing report
The Chair of Staffing noted that in response to feedback from NEC members at the previous NEC meeting, a longer and more useful report had been circulated on this occasion. It was confirmed that recruitment had begun for the Immigration Lawyer who would support members and branches directly for migrant worker members.
9. Election Structures (new item)
In keeping with the culture, much described in this and recent NEC reports, of a less-than-strict adherence to the standing orders of the NEC or access standards, a new agenda item had been circulated to NEC members at 12 noon on Monday 18th May, less than 2 days in advance of the NEC meeting. This included papers to be considered on new election procedures and structures for our internal national elections. The papers circulated late for this item totalled 26 pages.
The proposal was for separating the candidate registration and branch nomination periods before voting starts, rather than have them overlap as is the case at present. It was stated that it was hoped that we could trial this in SGE by-elections prior to using it as a new and tested process in the NEC elections in January.
The matter had however not been looked at by the relevant committee of the NEC (Development & Organising) but was coming straight to the NEC, and so without the benefit of detailed scrutiny.
It was pointed out by a delegate from the Police, Probation & CAFCASS service group that the previous debate on Industrial Action had been curtailed due to it not being discussed in the Industrial Action Committee but that the NEC was now being asked to set that aside and consider a detailed change to our election procedures without the benefit of scrutiny by a committee. The President agreed that the paper should be sent to Development & Organising first instead, and so the Chair of Development & Organising withdrew the paper and any decision was deferred.
10. NEC committee minutes and NEC minutes
These were all approved.
The meeting then was ended and it broke up as is usual into delegates variously talking, getting their things together and leaving the chamber. Very unusually however, there was some form of mix-up on the top table with Officers, as the President attempted to call back the NEC meeting to order to discuss and agree other By-election procedures.
The meeting was closed at this point and in disarray, however Dan Sartin spoke to protest that the NEC was apparently being called back to order in chaotic circumstances to agree to some form of election procedures, when it did not know what it was being asked to agree to, had not considered this, and was in not fit state to do so as the meeting had broken up into separate discussions with some delegates leaving. The President agreed with Dan Sartin that the matter she had tried to call the NEC to order to discuss should also be referred back to the Development & Organising Committee.
The meeting then truly did end and delegates headed for their trains back to their branches.