Becoming more active in Prospect: three ideas to take the next step

If you’ve already joined Prospect, you’re ready to take the next step and get involved with some other activities in the union.

Here are three suggestions for things you can do to familiarise yourself with your branch and start playing a more active role in your union.

1. Learn about what’s happening in your branch

Three colleagues chatting and smiling in an office

Most branches are employer-based and match your employer’s organisational structure (as far as possible), but some are sectoral or regional.

Your branch is a great place to start working with fellow members to improve:

  • career development
  • contracts and conditions of employment
  • hours, holidays and parental leave
  • pay
  • pensions
  • performance and promotion
  • restructuring and redundancy procedures
  • anything else at work!

2. Think about the issues where you work

What are the top three things you’d like to see change at work?

Often, we’re so busy working, we’re not really thinking about work itself, and how we can make it better.

So grab a sheet of paper and spend a few minutes taking some notes on:

  • What are the things you think could be different?
  • What would need to happen to get you from where you are, to where you’d like to be?
  • Now try and work out who else faces (or likely faces) these issues. Might you be able to work together?
  • Lastly, think about who you’d need to talk to if you to make it happen. What’s the best way of approaching them?

Congratulations – you’re thinking like a rep!

But! Before you do anything, contact your rep and talk it through with them. Your rep can connect you with what’s already going on, as well as information, resources and people who will have dealt with similar problems before.

3. Get involved in one of our campaigns

Picture of Prospect members on the picket line
Prospect campaigns for better national policy for workers. We also campaign within individual sectors and employers.

Currently, we’re campaigning to:

  • ensure that the union plays a strong role in addressing the climate emergency
  • help set new rules for our working lives in the digital age, including limiting workplace surveillance and demanding a “right to disconnect” in order to prevent the blurring of the boundary between work and home life.
  • fight for dignity for public sector workers
  • tackle and eliminate sexual harassment in the workplace.

As well as our national campaigns, there are also countless opportunities to get involved in or start local campaigns. Why not start a conversation with your rep, or raise it at your next branch meeting?