National delegate conference

UNISON’s national delegate conference is our annual policy-making ‘parliament’

Attendees at UNISON national delegates conference

UNISON policy decisions

Our national delegate conference (NDC) is UNISON’s supreme policy-making body. Every year, delegates from all over the UK take part in debates and vote to decide on our policies and campaigning priorities.

We make sure that delegates represent UNISON’s diverse membership and meet our principles of proportionality and fair representation.

Proportionality means that the numbers of female and male delegates are in fair proportion to our numbers of female and male members.

Fair representation means that delegates represent the broad balance of our members, taking into account age and low pay, full-time and part-time workers, manual and non-manual workers, different occupations, skills, ethnicities, sexual orientation, disability and gender identity.

As well as the national delegate conference, other national conferences take place every year to develop policy around our members’ sectors and self-organised equality groups.

The decisions made at the national delegate conference are published in the NDC conference decision booklet and in an updated UNISON rulebook.

Deciding our collective priorities

Branch representation

Branches and regions work together to ensure that delegates from our branches represent all our members, including low-paid women and young, disabled, LGBT+ and Black members.

Branches also consider the balance between full-time and part-time workers, manual and non-manual workers, different occupations and skills.

Regional and national representation

Representatives from all parts of UNISON take part in our annual conference, including:

regional councils;
national self-organised groups;
service groups;
the private contractors’ national forum;
the national and regional young members’ forums;
the national and regional retired members’ committees.