On Friday 20 May, branches from across the East Midlands came together for the first time since before the pandemic to celebrate and recognise the incredible work they do for members in the region.
Exemplary Campaign Award
Leicester City
West Gate School in Leicester, is an education setting for 180 pupils, aged 4 to 19, with a range of learning needs. Pupils have moderate to severe learning difficulties, autism spectrum conditions, multiple learning difficulties and highly complex needs.
An academisation order was applied to the school in 2018 and Falcon Education Trust were appointed to run the school in early 2021.
Sam Randfield, UNISON Leicester City Assistant Branch Secretary for Schools immediately drew up a campaign plan to engage with staff at the school as well as parents and the wider public. Under Sam’s command the campaign quickly gathered traction, having a petition signed by over 4,000 people, getting on board the local MPs, and gaining wide backing from parents and the local community.
Sam also organised a rally outside a full council meeting in November, which put pressure on councillors to back UNISON’s position to keep the school under local authority control which was attended by many members and parents. Digital advertising was used throughout the campaign to reach a wide audience alongside traditional media formats meaning the campaign reached well over 25,000 people.
This led to the union significantly raising its profile across the city as well as welcoming lots of new members to the branch.
The academy order was revoked in December 2021.
Excellent Branch Communication Award
Derby City
Derby City make excellent use of Facebook and have a great website.
They have also pioneered digital advertising partnerships with the City’s shopping Centre, Derbion.
They regularly produce fabulous newsletters for members and their individual employer newsletters are exceptional. These have been done for all meetings arranged at each employer they are targeting. The newsletters explain the benefits of being in a union, the ways people can meet UNISON and contact us afterwards, and any issues at the employer, that UNISON is seeking to help with.
Outstanding Activist Award
Chris Hanrahan – Leicestershire Police
Chris has been employed by Leicestershire Police Force for over 35 years and during nearly all that time he has been a rep. He has been a Branch Secretary for 25 years and the Branch Chair before that.
Underlying all his representation is putting the members first, believing in them and being their Friend at Work. He seems to have endless patience in putting members at ease, explaining things and options in an understandable way.
Using his skill and knowledge, Chris has encouraged, tutored, mentored and been a great role model in bringing on and training new Reps to great success. He has been and continues to be everything a rep should be: caring, fearless in the face of possible injustice and an all-round good egg!
Promoting Member Learning Award
Loughborough University
Loughborough University branch is a shining example for the whole of UNISON. Last year, Collina Wicks was awarded the Trade Union Congress’s Union Learning Rep Award for bringing together the two strands of Equality and Learning during lockdown, and for so much more.
Collina also tied Learning into national days of equality such as Holocaust Memorial Day. When we went into Lockdown, she extended this by working with lecturers and speakers from her university who could give online talks. These included:
- Black History is My History is your History (For Black History Month)
- The Love that dare not speak its name: LGBTQ Love poems through the ages (For LGBT+ History Month)
- Getting to ‘yeh’ without feeling ‘meh’ (For International Women’s Day)
These attracted large numbers and the videos placed on the Branch’s webpages for members to watch in their own time.
Last year Collina was joined by another Union Learning Rep, Danielle Jarvis. They did great work together, with Danielle organising an extra course before going on Maternity Leave.
There is no sign of this letting up. Just this week the Branch ran ‘Dealing with Difficult Phone Calls’ and ‘Managing Conflict in Teams’ and started promoting a brand-new course, “How to be Sustainable in our daily lives.”
Outstanding Public Servant Award
Rob Ferrol – EMAS
Rob has been employed by EMAS since 2006 and qualified has a paramedic in 2009.
Rob and his family have been hosting children from Ukraine for the last 10 years, these children have been affected by the Chernobyl Nuclear disaster of 1986. One child he hosted was Vlada who found herself in a dire situation after Russia’s invasion of her home town of Irpin. She fled, with her parents to an area south of Kiev and later this area became unsafe. Her father was under obligation to stay due to all males between 18 & 60 not being allowed to leave Ukraine and her mother was in the Health profession and equally felt compelled to stay. So, following an evening of communication with her family, and hearing further shelling, Rob told her parents to start the journey to the Ukraine border and he would be there to meet Vlada.
Rob jumped on a plane the very next morning to Poland, hired a car and drove the 1000 miles to the Ukraine border. The journey took Vlada and her parents 2 days due to curfew restrictions, and travel difficulties, and then a 10 hour queue to pass through to the border. Rob waited patiently waited in freezing conditions sleeping in that little hire car.
Rob and his family are now looking after Vlada as a host family under the Homes for Ukraine Scheme.
Contribution to Welfare – There For You
Georgie Burdett
Georgie Burdett has been a stalwart of UNISON’s charity, There for You for almost 50 years, only retiring last year.
Georgie was also Chair of the Regional Welfare Committee and Branch Welfare Officer at Nottingham City. She has done a great deal to raise the profile of There for You with members who do not know about it. She was kind and dependable to many desperate members facing the loss of their homes, the breakup of their families or the threat of the dole queue.
She has been a tough advocate, a marvellous administrator, and a beautiful Poster Girl for UNISON.
For more information on the awards and the recipients, email the East Midlands Press team here.