Welcome to UNISON West Midlands
Our members are people working in public services or for private contractors providing public services and essential utilities.
They include frontline staff and managers working full or part-time in local authorities, the NHS, colleges and schools, universities, the electricity, gas and water industries, police services, transport and in the social care and voluntary sectors.
Members are organised into 93 branches across the West Midlands from Birmingham to Warwickshire, Telford to Herefordshire and Staffordshire to Wolverhampton.
As well as defending public services and fighting the government’s cuts to public services, our priorities are promoting equality for all our members.
Join UNISON’s network of people across the UK who tackle problems at work and improve conditions for themselves and their colleagues through their UNISON branch.
Welcome to UNISON West Midlands.
UNISON is the biggest union in the UK and in the West Midlands, we have more than 120,000 members across the region.
Our members are people working in public services or for private contractors providing public services and essential utilities. They include frontline staff and managers working full or part-time in local authorities, the NHS, colleges and schools, universities, the electricity, gas and water industries, police services, transport and in the voluntary sector.
You may know us from your workplace where we have represented you or your colleagues in grievances and disciplinaries. But we want to do much more than just represent workers in grievances and disciplinaries. We want to help workers build their own power so they can achieve big wins for themselves.
Members are organised into more than 50 branches across the West Midlands from Birmingham to Warwickshire, Telford to Herefordshire and Staffordshire to Wolverhampton.
UNISON only has strength because of our members, but to build power we need you to stand up and be counted.
UNISON West Midlands:
- Wants you and your colleagues to have your own power to win change in your workplace
- Will support you to develop yourself through education, training, and opportunities to do new things.
- We are a union that holds politicians to account. Instead of waiting to respond to their agenda, we make our own asks of them on issues that you care about, through our regional manifestos.
We know that times are hard, for some they’ve never been harder than now. But hope is also rising. Maybe you can feel a change in your workplace?
Want to know more about how you can build that power? Email us at [email protected]
Together, we can build the power to win in your workplace.
Ravi Subramanian, regional secretary
Structure, democracy and elections
Democracy is key to UNISON’s structure and values – we are proud to be a member-led union as set out in our rules.
Every UNISON member is a member of a branch. At the beginning of the year, each branch holds an annual general meeting, which elects the officers of the branch and branch committee.
Each branch is also part of a region and elects delegates to the regional council.
This consists of delegates from branches, service groups and self-organised groups and meets regularly throughout the year to oversee the work of the union in your region.
One of those meetings is an annual general meeting where your delegates elect smaller regional committees to carry out work between regional council meetings, plus office holders including a regional convenor, who is the senior lay officer of the union in the region.
The convenor, along with any deputies and other regional officers – such as a financial convenor – is an ordinary member of the union, not an employee.
UNISON’s service groups (bringing together members working in specific services) and member groups (women, Black members, disabled members, LGBT members, young members and retired members) also have a regional structure which members take part in.
All members’ voices should be heard. It is important to take part in ballots to make your views known and in elections to decide who represents you at the workplace, in your branch and at regional and national level.
This means all members have a right to take part in making the decisions which define what work we do, our campaigns and priorities.
As a union member you have the right to vote in elections to decide who sits on these committees and structures.
You also have the right to stand for election to any of these bodies, at branch, regional or national level.
All UNISON elections are governed by the principles of “proportionality and fair representation”. This means the make-up of all elected bodies in the union must represent the make-up of the membership – so you will often find some seats on committees etc. reserved for women or low-paid members, for instance, to make sure this happens.
Challenge Equality and Discrimination
Equality is at the heart of UNISON. Find out more about the different members groups you can get involved in
More from UNISON West Midlands
Get help
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