Brighton & Hove Unison

16/07/2026

Incoming Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, has an historic opportunity to end over a decade of decline and pay cuts in our council and schools. Pay increases bring in more tax payments to the treasury and put money back in local communities so make sure you look out for your purple ballot envelope and vote YES for strike action on pay.

Brighton & Hove UNISON is the only union balloting council and schools’ staff in the city on this year’s pay offer. 3.3% is way below the National Joint Council unions (UNISON, UNITE and the GMB) demand of 10% and does nothing to address the historic shortfall in pay against inflation which means council and schools’ staff are effectively working a day a week for free.

The ballot is open till 6 August, and anyone who joins UNISON by 23 July can join the fight back for fair pay.

UNISON have moved swiftly to ballot as delays to pay increases have adverse affects to those, in particular, in receipt of in-work benefits where bulk back-payments can affect Universal Credit payments in particular.

Work out how much pay you've lost: https://unisonpaycalculator.co.uk/

Pledge to help get the vote out in your workplace: https://unison.org.uk/activity-pledge-council-and-schools-pay

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13/07/2026

🚩UNISON’s council and school members vote on pay strikes! 🚩

Around 200,000 council and school workers at more than 500 employers in England and Wales, including Brighton and Hove City Council begin voting today (Thursday) on whether to strike over pay. The ballot runs until Thursday 6 August. Look out for your purple envelope in the post over the coming weeks!

Anyone who joins UNISON in the next two weeks can be included in the ballot. So join now if you want to be a part of the fightback.

The ballot follows the union's rejection of a 3.3% pay offer from local government employers, which UNISON says falls well short of restoring the value of staff pay after years of decline. Teaching assistants, social workers, waste collection staff, trading standards teams, housing officers and librarians are among those voting in the four-week ballot.

UNISON general secretary Andrea Egan said today: “Council and school workers kept vital services running through years of brutal austerity, with rising demand and relentless pressure. They deserve far better than another pay offer leaving them falling ever further behind:

“This huge ballot is the direct consequence of employers expecting staff to accept less while delivering more, year after year. That's taken a growing toll on workers, on local services and on the communities depending on them.”

Earlier this year, local government employers wrote to the three main unions – UNISON, Unite and GMB – outlining the 3.3% pay deal for 2026-27. All three rejected the deal. UNISON and Unite are now balloting over potential strikes.

UNISON says the employers' offer does nothing to reverse years of falling pay across local government and schools. Staff have seen the value of their wages fall by an average of around 26% since 2010, when adjusted for inflation.

The impact has been felt across the workforce. Typically, for a teaching assistant that is equivalent to around £7,000 in lost real-terms pay, as much as £18,000 for a social worker and almost £19,500 for a housing officer.

Low pay is also making it harder for councils and schools to recruit and retain staff, which adds pressure on vital local services and the communities relying on them, the union says.

Andrea added: “No one chooses lightly to take strike action. And there's still time for employers to improve this pay offer and avoid a dispute.

“Failing that, it should come as no surprise if workers decide the only way left to secure the fair pay and respect they deserve is to walk out.”

If the ballot is successful when would we go on strike?

If workers back industrial action, walkouts could begin early in the autumn.

08/07/2026

UNISON has warned that government plans to extend the wait for settlement rights from 5 to 15 years could worsen staff shortages in social care by driving overseas workers away. The changes build on earlier 2025 visa restrictions that already reduced international recruitment.

UNISON has warned that government plans to extend the wait for settlement rights from 5 to 15 years could worsen staff shortages in social care by driving overseas workers away. The changes build on earlier 2025 visa restrictions that already reduced international recruitment. The union argues tha

01/07/2026

UNISON rep Alex Eades has been raising money for the charity, Charlotte’s BAG, which supports research into brain tumours. The charity was set up in honour of Charlotte Eades, Alex’s daughter, who died of a brain tumour in 2016, aged 19.

UNISON rep Alex Eades has been raising money for the charity, Charlotte’s BAG, which supports research into brain tumours. The charity was set up in honour of Charlotte Eades, Alex’s daughter, who died of a brain tumour in 2016, aged 19. Charlotte was diagnosed with a rare form of brain cancer i...

29/06/2026

SAVE WELLINGTON HOUSE! ✊🤝⏰❤️❗️📣

Our branch was at today's protest outside Hove Town Hall, representing our members who are skilled and experienced support workers and advocates for many of the city's most vulnerable adults with learning disabilities. We stood with parents and carers today who talked of their devastation at the possibility of the centre closing. This isn't just about uprooting their children and loved ones from a service they have known for years - it's about tearing apart a community, that they and their families rely on.

Wellington House is THE LAST council run day centre for adults with learning disabilities. It has the capacity, the skilled workforce and the space to become a centre of excellence for our learning disabled community.

The council must:

▶️focus on the growth of the service and the development of it and the building's potential to raise revenue.

▶️stop the sell off of our city's assets and focus on prevention through the insourcing of excellent service provision.

▶️make a decision in September based on the feedback and ideas of service users families, LD organisations and campaign groups, our trade union and our members and consider alternative proposals to closure.

▶️make a decision based on human rights not money. Service users are not a 'unit cost' they are people!

If just two home-care relationships break down due to the pressures of changed provision, the projected savings from the closure could be written off through high-cost residential provision in just 2 years. And if more than two broke down through the lack of proper provision in the city it would go even quicker and potentially lead to being a cost rather than a saving.



Brighton Hove and District Trades Union Council Amaze Disability Pride Brighton Brighton & Hove Labour Group Brighton & Hove Green Party UNISON

26/06/2026

How any union can support a non Net Zero Chancellor when people are dropping dead all over Europe with heatstroke is beyond comprehension. They should instead be focusing all their efforts on a just transition for fossil fuel and arms workers so they can stop doing jobs that contribute to killing trade union members in other countries.

Exclusive: Head of trade union backs energy secretary to replace Rachel Reeves, but two other big unions are opposed UK politics live – latest updates

26/06/2026

UNISON Brighton & Hove mourns the loss of Alan Mooring, a devoted union member and the Secretary of the Brighton and Hove Retired Members of Unison Section for many years.

UNISON Brighton & Hove mourns the loss of Alan Mooring, a devoted union member and the Secretary of the Brighton and Hove Retired Members of Unison Section for many years. Born 1936, Alan had joined Brighton Borough Council in 1952, aged 16, initially as a clerk in the Health Department. H

25/06/2026

The change follows a long UNISON campaign highlighting unequal leave between staff groups. UNISON University of Brighton branch secretary Ivan Bonsall said: “Professional services staff are the backbone of the university. Despite their contribution, they’re treated differently to academic staff while often working longer hours and receiving fewer paid holidays.”

Support staff at the University of Brighton—including library, admin and IT workers—have secured a new agreement giving them up to seven extra days of paid annual leave, UNISON says. From September, all professional services staff on grades 1–9 will receive 30 days’ holiday from day one, red...

16/06/2026

Brighton and Hove UNISON was proud to join the fight to protect Brighton and Hove’s values of inclusion, anti-racism and diversity at Saturday’s Carnival Against Fascism. With the trade union bloc we held the line at Seven Dials and Terminus Road, and had members involved in the final actions to stop the far-right marching down Trafalgar Street.

On social media in the run up to Saturday there was a lot of far-right activity on posts promoting the carnival. It was obvious that many of these commenters had been given prompts, scripts and key messages to use by national organisers. These included an echo of racist tropes – “you weren’t born in Brighton so your opinion doesn’t count”.

We also saw consistent attempts to suggest that the values of the extreme right are shared by the majority of people in Brighton and Hove. The number and rate of these engineered responses (many of which will also be bots) created a false narrative, a narrative that was utterly dismantled on the day itself.

Because the truth was revealed by WHO ACTUALLY TURNED UP – over 4000 local people, community organisations, politicians, trade unions and activists came together to stand up for the fundamental principal of our city as a place that is safe for all. And who were they met by? A couple of hundred so called ‘Patriots’ most of whom came in on the train from outside the city.

Where was this ‘silent majority’ that the far right claimed to represent? Nowhere to be seen, because quite simply, they and their values of hate and exclusion will always be in the minority.

The narrative from the far right was also filled with hateful and discriminatory language. Counter protestors experienced homophobia, transphobia and sexually violent and racist language. Social media trolling included playground level jibes such as ‘lefties smell’ and another favourite ‘they’re jobless hordes’ a comment clearly disproved by the many friends and colleagues we marched with including teachers, social workers and care workers.

And our branch is also concerned to see and hear examples of actions by the police that caused harm and distress and appeared to prioritise trying to identify a route for the far-right group to march rather than prioritise the safety of the thousands of counter protestors or the local businesses on these routes.

Saturday was an extraordinary day, one that is gaining attention across the country. Some clear learning and messages have started to emerge:

• Direct peaceful activism that comes from grass roots collective organising is the most effective and powerful.
• Narratives on social media are often false, based on cynical manipulation and the use of bots that put out automated comments and reactions. Don’t trust what you read without doing some research or using the evidence of your own eyes and lived experience.
• The police response has triggered questions and concerns from local councillors, community organisations and activists and these questions and concerns MUST be answered and investigated.



NEU Brighton & Hove Brighton Hove and District Trades Union Council Brighton & Hove Stands Up To Racism University of Brighton Unison East Sussex Unison

11/06/2026

We don't want your hate in our city. A clear statement from our Council Leader Cllr Bella Sankey.