Dispatches from York - University of Bristol UNISON

📣 UNISON HE & FE Conference 2025

In November, committee members Alex K (co-branch sec), the other Alex (co-comms officer), Elle (branch chair), Mia (co-comms officer), and Verity (women’s officer) travelled to York for UNISON’s Higher Education (HE) and Further Education (FE) seminar.

There were two days of workshops, collaboration and talks, including a lot of discussion about the current pay ballot.

📝 workshops

Our delegation made sure to cover the full range of workshops – here are some of our notes:

Trans ally training

Shocking facts and figures – e.g. UK has fallen from 1^st in 2015 to 15^th in 2025 in ILGA Europe rankings for LGBTQ+ friendly countries.

UNISON unfortunately tends to vocally support the trans community rather than take action (the upcoming HE conference ruled out and unpublished every motion put forward relating to trans people because of ‘legal jeopardy’). We have to try and fight this from the inside!

UNISON provides trans ally training (developed by trans and non-binary members) that includes how to actively reradicalise transphobes – can book for our branch if interest.

Understanding University finances

This session contained some useful hints on how to decipher the financial reports that Universities release each year, including how to spot significant figures and decode ambiguous language.

Comrades from universities implementing cost-saving exercising shared tactics for negotiating with management.

UNISON’s year of green activity

This was a summary of events that would be taking place during UNISON’s upcoming “Year of green activity”: 2026 UNISON Year of Green Activity – UNISON National

It was also a chance to promote the new “environmental officer” role and encourage branches to fill this role. At UoB we have already had an environmental officer for a few years!

Engaging in HE policy

What policy actually is i.e. the expression of members’ views, and the barriers to understanding and getting involved with policy making

How UNISON engages with big HE players like the OfS (Office for Students) and NUS (National Union of Students) through committees and consultations.

How we can affect policy: attending UNISON conferences and getting involved with motions and voting.

🤝 Collaborating with other branches

It was also a useful chance to meet and share ideas with members from other HE branches. In breakout sessions, we met with colleagues from Wales and London to share local challenges and successes. We were inspired by how the other UoB (University of Brimingham) branch tracked votes during their industrial action ballot, and how University College London Student Union’s branch successfully campaigned for a four-day working week.

Together we discussed the support we’d like to see next year from the Higher Education Service Group Executive (HESGE – the Committee elected to represent HE branches), including taking a strong stance against increasingly insulting pay offers and fighting redundancies.

It was also a chance to show off our own achievements as an active and engaged branch – including leaving out our recent strike ballot leaflets for other delegates to admire 😉.

🗣️ Talks

We also heard many inspiring talks – a highlight being one from UNISON’s North-East regional leads Vicky Knight and Joanne Moorcroft, who shared the amazing work they’ve done on their strategy to stop violence against women and girls in their region. They developed a charter for employers to sign to show their active commitment, which we now want the South-West region to get involved with. There’s an article by Joanne about their amazing work here.

We also attended a fringe event with Andrea Egan, where she shared her vision for HE if she is elected as UNISON’s new general secretary. She emphasised how HE gets left behind in UNISON, even though our universities train the other sectors UNISON represents. She wants to organise rather than service members, and provide more support and resources for branch officers. She’ll also fight for us in government, recognising that although we can make powerful change in our workplaces, we need systemic change. This also includes cutting UNISON’s ties with the labour party. Andrea is a working-class social worker and branch secretary; it was refreshing to hear from someone who has experienced hardship at work, and someone committed to real socialist politics.

🍻 And finally…

In our free time we still did the most trade union-y things possible: a pint in The Golden Ball – an incredible community owned co-op pub – and visiting dusty bookshops only to make a beeline for the politics section.

We left the seminar feeling inspired by new ideas, and confident in our current work as a branch.