By Glen Williams, Time For Real Change.

Ballots will be going out to UNISON members from 21st April for the National Executive Council elections. UNISON faces a series of elections this year which are absolutely fundamental for the future of our union. Since 2021, candidates supported by Time For Real Change have held a majority on the NEC.

In that time, with the adoption of our Organising to Win Strategy, UNISON is becoming a union focused on an organising and campaigning approach that is starting to deliver results. We have seen record net growth of 40,000 new members in 2024, with 4,500 new reps, and increasing levels of pay where we’ve taken action – £110m in back pay for Health Care Assistants alone. Remarkably, there are some in our union who want to turn back and reject this organising strategy.

Time For Real Change are supporting candidates committed to UNISON being:

1.       led by its members; elected and accountable to that membership.

2.       an organising and campaigning union that wins for members on pay.

3.       able to deliver effective action when members want it.

This year’s NEC elections are possibly the most hotly contested in recent memory. So far, Time For Real Change candidates have secured close to 2,000 nominations, our highest total yet. But the most important stage is coming up, with UNISON members able to vote between 21st April and 21st May. If you are a UNISON member and want the same things we do for the union, sign up to Time For Real Change here.

This year’s NEC elections are particularly important because there will be General Secretary elections later this year. Time For Real Change are supporting Andrea Egan, a straight-talking working class trade unionist who started working life as a low-paid children’s residential care worker, supporting vulnerable children, going on to become an unqualified social worker before qualifying 15 years ago. Andrea is committed to turning UNISON into a genuinely member-led union and has pledged not to take the £166,000 pay package currently received by the incumbent.

Andrea is also opposed to the current subservience of our union to the factional interests of the Starmer leadership of the Labour Party, which has resulted in millions of pounds being donated to the Labour Party and MPs without substantive concessions being secured in response, and UNISON reliably voting to entrench the power of the Starmer leadership at Labour Conference and on Labour’s NEC. The consequences of this subservience have become clear for all to see in recent weeks, with the overwhelming majority of the 100+ MPs that UNISON support, failing to commit to opposing the Government’s appalling welfare cuts.

Time For Real Change are rank and file UNISON activists determined to make our union democratic, transparent and successful – a fighting union that delivers for its members. To find out more about us and the candidates we are supporting for UNISON’s NEC elections, click here. To find out more about Andrea Egan’s campaign, click here.

Image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattcornock/13487649954 Licence: Attribution 2.0 Generic CC BY 2.0 Deed