Dan Sartin reflects on UNISON’s recent General Secretary election.

Something staggering happened on December 17th, 2025. UNISON, the UK’s largest trade union, elected a new General Secretary – Andrea Egan – a candidate standing on a clear and unashamed socialist platform. This marked arguably the biggest win for the left since Jeremy Corbyn saw off the ‘chicken coup’ in 2016.

Why was UNISON the unlikely focus for this change of fortune? After all, UNISON had been in the iron-grip of the Labour right since its inception as a union in 1993. Decades had seen the union’s right-wing bureaucracy entrench itself and consolidate power. The resultant political culture was stifling and was a direct contributor to UNISON’s organisational inefficiency and failure to win industrially for members.

Years in the making

Like all hard-won changes, this one was years in the making. In 2016, UNISON Action was created as a new left caucus within the union. UNISON Action helped propel the left to become a more effective opposition within UNISON’s governing body, its National Executive Council (NEC). It did well in the 2019 NEC elections, albeit not winning a majority. Unity on the left in UNISON did not hold, however. By the time of the 2020 UNISON General Secretary election, UNISON Action was wound up following the Socialist Party’s decision to stand its own candidate. This led to the creation of Time For Real Change, a new left formation without Socialist Party comrades, which ultimately went on to prove itself the most successful left group in UNISON’s history.

Time For Real Change retained a remarkable unity of purpose. Its candidate in the 2020 General Secretary election, Paul Holmes, achieved a record number of votes for a lay member, coming second to Christina McAnea with 34 per cent of the vote in a four-horse race.

Lessons learnt 2021-25

Time For Real Change built on this progress and the following year in 2021 achieved an overall majority on the union’s NEC. This was a huge breakthrough, sending shockwaves through the bureaucracy, and naturally enough led to a bitter fightback from the right-wing of the union throughout 2021-25. These were tough years with many ups and downs, but all comrades who engaged in those struggles to win UNISON for its members learnt and improved from them in a variety of ways.

By the time of the 2025 General Secretary election, years of comradely working on the NEC and its committees throughout 2021-25 rebuilt trust to a level that the Socialist Party agreed not to stand a candidate. Andrea Egan stood with the endorsement of Time For Real Change following a contested selection process amongst its supporters. The selection was held informally due to Time For Real Change’s necessary lack of any constitution (such formalisation could have been against the union’s election rules set by the right and could have led to disciplinary action being taken against UNISON members). But it was held with enough rigour and transparency that all parties were satisfied with the outcome and committed to work to elect Andrea Egan.

Having one candidate, and the comradely selection process used to identify her, was not the only reason for the left’s success.

Sheer hard bloody work

Winning an election against an incumbent candidate with the backing of the union’s bureaucracy was never going to be easy. UNISON’s rules allow for its paid staff to become its members. They cannot benefit from UNISON’s bargaining or its individual representation for members, but they do have a right to stand for election to its General Secretary position and to take a full part in campaigning in that election.

Time For Real Change activists needed to overcome several inbuilt disadvantages. Of foremost importance in countering these was the capacity for sheer hard work amongst lay activists, and the discipline and commitment required to get campaigning tasks done and on time, over an extended period. Hundreds of comrades across the union’s regions and nations played a role in getting Andrea Egan elected. They should all take a bow.

Campaigning is an ‘extra’ for lay activists, done after the end of the working day or before it starts, on top of the day job and the union commitments reps have. The determination to stick to the plan and get the job done was critical. For Andrea’s core campaign team, and their candidate, this meant daily weekday meetings for over a year prior to the voting period, plus weekend and evening meetings. It was gruelling but making the personal sacrifices to find the time to grind out the victory, task by task and campaign output by campaign output, was what made the difference. This is a lesson we would do well not to forget.

Trust your comrades

Time For Real Change has a collective, informal leadership. For the reasons above, it could not be constituted. Time For Real Change worked and works well because of an implicit trust, shared between comrades at all its levels. This trust is built by UNISON branch activists and reps through years of their shared experience and understanding of the union, its bureaucracy and its shortcomings. The difficult and punitive internal culture, which previous General Secretaries presided over, inevitably brought activists together in a spirit of comradeship and defiance. Through years of frustration and dissatisfaction came, over time, an acceptance of the primary and overriding need to win internal union elections if things were ever going to change.

Time For Real Change has circles of informal leadership and activity: at its core, in its regions, in its service groups, and in its self-organised (equalities) groups. This way of working evolved organically and as a result led to semi-autonomous activity taking place at all levels throughout UNISON’s multiple elected structures. Time For Real Change works without a formal constitution or elections of officers, and its success is based on trust and toleration. It might sound simple, but we have seen recently what happens to left projects when trust is lost.

A radical manifesto

Andrea Egan’s election manifesto was developed similarly through an informal but nevertheless democratic and participatory series of meetings of Time For Real Change supporters from across the union. This development process again was one rested on trust, which led to a comprehensive final manifesto which all supporters could sign up to and be proud of. The manifesto and how it was arrived at was a contributory factor to the election win, as it spoke to the union’s activists and members about what UNISON could and should become.

But one particular manifesto commitment was and remains key to reinforcing the trust required for organisational success. The commitment for the Time For Real Change candidate to only take a worker’s wage if elected (and not the £181,000 salary package on offer) played this dual role.

A worker’s wage

It is probably the most important single pledge for members. It tells them that the candidate is motivated to do the role for the right reasons, and has no interest in rising above them, and indeed will do the job better by remaining ‘one of them’. In a union with hundreds of thousands of low-paid public service workers, this is an important signal and indicates also the care that will be taken of the hard-earned subs members pay to the union.

But more than this, it is a signal to Time For Real Change comrades ourselves that we, as a movement determined to democratise and build a union fit for our members and which will also serve the country better, do not put forward our leaders for personal gain or profit. This reinforces trust and the relationship between Time For Real Change and our own leaders, whom we increasingly hope to elect and see within all the union’s structures over time. We are all committed to this industrial and political project for our union, and this commitment transcends and must continue to transcend any desire for personal reward over and above a worker’s wage.

The worker’s wage principle is one we should be discussing more within our labour movement. If we are ever to be in a position to win trust again with the UK electorate, as we were on the precipice of achieving in the 2017 general election, there is a role for the worker’s wage principle. We need to convince a rightly cynical electorate that we are different and we aspire to power for different reasons than other politicians. Mandelson and his like mean we as the left must be clearer than ever that we are not motivated by personal gain, as has become ubiquitous in Parliament.

If it ain’t broke…

Time For Real Change’s forced informality and ways of working have served the left well.We havedecisively wona critical election for the leader of the UK’s biggest trade union. But within UNISON, because of its complex structures, the job is only half done, if that. There are multiple poles of power within UNISON and if you are not able to influence them all, you can be held back.

Time For Real Change cannot therefore afford to take its foot off the pedal. It must forge ahead. We have internal Service Group elections starting from 1st April to 13th May, and absolutely vital NEC elections in Spring 2027.

Time For Real Change cannot spend its next year wrangling over its own structures or we will miss the opportunity in front of us. There is a trade-off because in practice UNISON activists only have so much spare time, given the multiple competing pressures of day job or jobs, union work supporting members, union work within elected positions, commitments to family and friends and so on. The priority must be to continue to focus on our objectives of winning elections and preparing the conditions to allow our new General Secretary to succeed. We will not be able to do both successfully.

Nor has Time For Real Change been a forum for the left to debate every issue in UNISON and come to agreed positions. Time For Real Change is a broad left coalition, focused on winning power and how best to do that. If comrades want to change the union’s policy or practice, there are ample democratic structures available within the union itself to force those debates and effect change.

An urgent task for Time For Real Change is to draw more supporters into its activism, and our shared challenge will be to help those comrades into our networks where they can be supported to do the critical work still needed to build the left within UNISON.

Our winning candidate

For a union with over one million members, there was a consensus that this time the left should stand a candidate who was a woman. Andrea Egan is not just any woman candidate, however. She is the real deal: a working class lay member and fighter, with acumen, talent and capability in buckets. We are proud of her and thrilled to see her elected, as we know what UNISON could now become, if the left can maintain the same work ethic, trust and tolerance which led to the electoral breakthrough itself.

We as UNISON activists can already see the benefits of Andrea’s interventions in the media, whether defending migrant workers from Labour Government attacks or making clear our union’s demands for peace even when the leadership of the Party we affiliate to prefers indiscriminate bombing. These interventions would never have happened under previous UNISON General Secretaries, and we must not take them for granted.

But there is of course still a massive job ahead to implement Andrea’s manifesto. Elements of our union remain hostile to a socialist being in charge with its implications for the Labour right. There is though the possibility of a broader consensus on industrial issues and how we should change the union to address them.

Time For Real Change must remain focused on these tasks ahead, and winning forthcoming elections in 2026 and 2027, if we are to see through the change our union needs. Only then, as public service workers, can we hope to have the positive and lasting impact on the wider politics and priorities of our country which we all want to see so much.

Dan Sartin is branch secretary of UNISON West Sussex and a member of UNISON’s National Executive Council. Time For Real Change can be contacted through their website at https://timeforrealchange.uk/