How can union members ensure industrial action is successful?

Last updated: 17 Apr 2023

The are many things reps and activists can do to secure a successful outcome for industrial action.

These include:

  • Recruit new members.
  • Organise, campaign and lobby in the workplace.
  • Inform workers of the issues that led to the industrial action
  • Prospect staff will run the ballot, but identifying the data for the ballot notices is a key task for branch reps. This can include:
    • Check the branch membership data and records early, to see if we can comply with the statutory requirements and identify gaps.
    • Ensuring members update their membership records (this is easily done online)
    • Working with the FTO to identify relevant categories and workplaces for members
    • Categories could be by job title, pay grade, or occupational group, but it must be relevant to the employer.
    • Workplace addresses need to be checked to ensure records are up to date and don’t include old office addresses etc.
    • Where there are homeworkers, we should seek to identify the employer’s office address that they have the closest connection with (such as where team meetings are held, HR and admin issues are resolved etc).
    • Ensure we have home addresses for members to receive the postal ballot (industrial action ballots must be conducted via postal mail and cannot be carried out online).