Regional Organiser – South East region in Woking

If you are a highly capable, collaborative leader who’s committed to the aims of UNISON with a desire to strengthen workplace organisation and build worker power, here’s a chance to help steer the UK’s largest trade union through a period of major change. Our 1,200 staff work across 12 UK regions and our national centre in London. Regional offices support the work of local branches, helping to represent, recruit, organise and retain members – as well as making key contributions in areas such as campaigning, strategies for negotiation and bargaining, and actions against discrimination.

As a Regional Organiser, you’ll be playing a hands-on, day-to-day leadership role, as well as acting as an advocate of the union. Guiding, supporting and developing local branches and activists to ensure the strongest possible workplace organisation, you’ll identify activist training and development needs, provide coaching and mentoring to stewards and branch officers, and manage a small team of area/local organisers. Additionally, you will lead negotiations, represent members individually and collectively, and help branches to develop effective systems and processes for handling casework.

The person we’re looking for:

• An understanding of our movement, its pressures and drivers, with a passion for equality.
• A commitment to organising and building worker power.
• Ability to provide advice and guidance on the effective organisation of key branch duties (e.g. maintaining membership density, activist base enhancement, supporting employers with major restructuring, maintaining confidence in union ability to influence outcomes, oversight of case work and reducing response times).
• Good knowledge of key employment law, including developing case law and upcoming changes that may affect members.
• A strong understanding of the political landscape and how this might impact our approach.
• Ability to manage a team of staff, with a willingness to collaborate and to lead by example.
• Excellent communication and advocacy skills, with proven ability to manage high level negotiations and representation of cases in challenging situations.
• Ability to build and strengthen relationships with key stakeholders, ability to influence and engage at all levels e.g. activists, democratic bodies/committees.
• Strategic project management experience, including budget management.
• Ability to develop strategies and solutions to solve complex problems.

This is a field-based role and whilst we aim to allocate work to reduce travel time, you will need to be able to travel in and around the South East Region, including to our Woking Office where our regional centre is based as required and occasionally to London and other regions of the UK for training, meetings, or other purposes. The South East region covers a large area including Kent, Surrey, Sussex, Hampshire, Milton Keynes, Oxford, Southampton, Buckinghamshire, and beyond.

UNISON is the UK’s leading public services trade union, with over 1.3 million members working in the public sector, private, voluntary and community sectors and in the energy services. We employ approximately 1,200 staff, with around 370 at our national centre in Euston in central London and the remainder in our 12 regions across the UK, including Northern Ireland. UNISON is a dynamic, progressive union, committed to equality. We encourage men and women of all ages, Black and minority ethnic groups, disabled people, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people to work with us.

Starting salary: £57,826 per annum, plus £3,629 annual subsistence allowance.