How does UNISON elect its President and Vice-Presidents?

 As a service to readers of this blog, particularly those who believed that the UNISON NEC elects one Vice-President each year, with the Junior Vice-President going on to become Senior Vice-President a year later, and President a year thereafter, I reproduce below (from the UNISON Rule Book) UNISON Rules E.1 and E.2;

1 PRESIDENT 

1.1 There shall be a President of the Union, who shall be the Senior Honorary Official of the Union. 

1.2 The President shall be elected for a term of one year by the National Executive Council, from amongst the members of the National Executive Council. 

1.3 The President will chair meetings of the National Executive Council, and will preside over the National Delegate Conference of the Union. 

2 VICE-PRESIDENTS 

2.1 There shall be two Vice-Presidents, who shall be Honorary Officials of the Union. 

2.2 The Vice-Presidents will hold office for one year, and will be elected by the National Executive Council, from amongst the members of the National Executive Council. 

2.3 In the absence of the President, the Vice-Presidents will in rotation (one day at a time) chair the National Executive Council or National Delegate Conference, as the need arises. 

2.4 The National Executive Council shall elect the President and Vice-Presidents at the same time provided that two of the three shall be women.

The provisions of these Rules were elaborated upon, in the latest published version of the NEC members handbook (from 2019) as follows;

“The elections for a role on the Presidential Team takes place yearly at the end of National Delegate Conference at a meeting of the NEC. Members of the NEC interested in standing for election on to the Presidential Team should pass their details to the President or nominated officer on behalf of the President before 5pm on the Wednesday (every other year on the Thursday) during National Delegate Conference week. The Presidential Team is made up of the President and two Vice Presidents – 2 of whom must be women. Any member can stand for the post but elections must comply with the union’s proportionality requirements. If there is more than one candidate for any of the roles on the Presidential Team, then an election will take place amongst the NEC either at the NEC meeting held on the Friday morning of conference if the NEC is in its second year of office or at a specially convened NEC meeting at the close of conference if it’s a newly elected NEC. The election will be conducted by ‘a show of hands’. Candidates are invited to submit an introductory statement of no more than 300 words which will be circulated to all members who will be NEC members from the close of Conference each year. There will be no other representations made at the NEC meetings.”

This year, of course, references to National Delegate Conference have to be read as references to the Virtual Special Delegate Conference.

The upshot of all this is that next week the newly elected UNISON NEC will meet and will elect a President and two Vice-Presidents. Any NEC member may be elected to these positions subject only to the restriction that at least two of the three must be women.