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We urgently need an industrial strategy to take on the cost of living crisis by protecting jobs, raising pay and making work more secure.

We can stop site closures and cuts to services. We can overcome the challenges of AI. We can answer the climate emergency with a transition that defends and creates jobs.

This crucial industrial work must be shaped by the knowledge and experience of our workplace leaders. It must answer the needs of our members.

Collective bargaining is the strongest weapon our union has to reunite us, to take on the elites, end inequality, and take back control of our working lives. Our industrial goals must be to prove that being in a union delivers job security and better pay as we seek to radically extend the number of workers covered by collective bargaining.

Our union will always support members in dispute and we must give the same commitment to support frontline reps who are delivering for our members in the workplace every single day.

• Rebuild and strengthen our collective bargaining. 
• Develop member-led industrial strategies for each sector.
• Create a new Industrial Support Unit to support members and reps.
• Full support for all workers in dispute.
• Rebuild and protect the strike fund, with Executive Council oversight.

Our union has a proud history of organising, inherited from our different predecessor unions. We will reunite organising with the rest of our union. Organisers are not a ‘rent a mob’ army of flag wavers, which is how they are currently being treated. It cannot go on. Organising is a skill not a performance. That skill will be respected again and supported for real industrial organising.

The Organising Department will remain a national department. Organisers will take their place within our union, working on national campaigns supported by other departments and

embedded directly in national sectors and regions alongside officers and reps.

• Organise for growth and union power.
• Return the Organising Department to its core purpose of organising members and workplaces.
• End the toxic culture of intimidation and division. 
• Embed organising into the whole union.
• Ensure organisers are empowered, supported and coordinated across regions and sectors.

There is a new urgency for our union’s equalities work. In the workplace, in society and online, our members and equality reps are on a global frontline against hatred and reaction. In this context, we cannot separate our equalities and our industrial work. We must make our workplaces safe for all workers, especially those facing attacks and discrimination.

Unite is proud to be the trade union for many thousands of migrant workers. No matter where you were born, you have a home in our union and we will protect you.

We will reintroduce the migrant workers helpline so our members can access emergency legal support. We will support workers taking strikes – or other forms of action – to prevent ICE-style immigration raids. We will support organising campaigns against employers who are exploiting migrant workers.

We will always appreciate, encourage and support retired members who stay active in our union and continue fighting for a fairer future for the next generation of working people.

Pensions are the hard-earned deferred pay of our members. We will campaign to defend and improve the UK state pension. Industrially, we will bargain to defend and improve workplace pension schemes.

We must recognise that young workers face new pressures. We will ally with renters unions, tackle precarious work, and strengthen links with young members in international sister unions. 

• Fully integrate equalities work with our industrial agenda.
• Action and training to defeat the far-right.
• Defend and empower migrant workers.
• Develop a future leaders programme for young members.
• Expand our Retired Members section to campaigns and education.

 Together we can stop the far-right in their tracks. Preventing a far-right government is the most important political issue of our times.

People are angry and are right to be. Our union must be the answer. We must be the force for change that confronts the corporate elites and all those who seek to divide us.

Members will have their say on our union’s link to the Labour Party. Our guiding principle must be that we will only support politicians who support us. That is our test for any politician who claims to speak for us.

We cannot afford for our union to be missing in action. We will have a powerful voice anywhere decisions are made about our lives, at the bargaining table and in the halls of political power. 

• Stop a far-right government from coming to power in the UK.
• Hold Labour to account, demand investment and rebuild public services.
• Only support politicians who support us.
• A new political strategy to rebuild Unite’s political power and influence.
• Restore Unite’s voice in the movement.
• Restore Unite’s political education.

 We must rebuild and revitalise our unions education programme - making it fit for the challenges members face today and the struggles they face in the future.

The current leadership has long promised, but never delivered, a review of education.

• Launch a full review of our union’s education programme.
• Rebuild political education across all training.
• Modernise and expand access to training.
• Develop tailored, sector specific training.
• Campaign for public investment in union education.

Hundreds of thousands of Unite members work in multinational companies where important decisions are taken in head offices located outside the UK and Ireland. It is essential that reps and members have the professional support to build and maintain alliances with sister unions to protect their jobs and conditions in the face of ruthless multinational employers.

As one of the largest trade unions in the world, Unite’s support for fellow trade unionists and peoples facing the worst imaginable repression has made a critical difference to their struggles, from Chile to South Africa, from Turkey to Palestine, and in many other countries too. We will put international solidarity at the heart of our union.

• Strengthen international solidarity between workers in multinationals.
• Stand firm on solidarity with Palestine and all struggles for freedom.
• Reassert Unite’s global leadership in the trade union movement.
• Relaunch Workers Uniting in partnership with the United Steel Workers.

We must open the books, end corruption and strengthen member oversight of our union. Our union must be run by the members for the members. It is your union and it belongs to you, not the General Secretary.

The scandals over the Birmingham Hotel, the Certification Officer rulings that Unite’s leadership has obstructed EC members from being able to carry out financial oversight, and the leadership’s refusal to disclose financial information, demonstrate beyond any doubt that our lay-member control needs strengthening.

• Open the books. Full accountability with members’ money.
• Guarantee financial oversight of our union by the Executive Council.
• Strengthen lay-member control and respect for the Executive Council.
• Ensure EC members are properly trained for governance.
• Empower all regions and nations with a voice and vote.
• Rebuild unity through respect.

It’s time to end the old toxic divisions which hold our union back. We need a coherent plan to reunite the union and end the poisonous internal divisions that have been created.

• Immediately order a full financial review to establish the true state of our union’s finances.
• End the current practice of obstructing elected reps from being able to exercise proper financial oversight.
• Reassure all Unite officers, staff, and organisers, that as an employer Unite will abide by all policies and collective agreements. Union busting of staff and officers by senior management of the union will be brought to an immediate end.
• Return to the democratic traditions of our predecessor unions and bring new clarity and transparency to the overall structure of Unite.
• One simple system for complaints, so members are not bounced around, with oversight by the Executive Council.

Download the full manifesto