We don’t receive any Unison information from the branch at our workplace. Why?
The branch sends out its information every month to over 400 workplace locations within the City Council. You may not get to see information for two basic reasons:
- No-one in your particular workplace is willing to receive the information and place it on the relevant notice boards. If you would like to become a post box contact for your workplace, please contact the branch office.
- Information is going to your workplace location but the recipient is not displaying it on the notice boards or not sharing it fully with all colleagues in the workplace location. Again, please contact the branch office should this be occurring – we could change the name of the post box contact or add a second one if appropriate.
I am a paying Unison member but am not receiving any information from Regional or National Office or my copy of the Unison Magazine.
Your status as a member of Unison is based on the fact that you are currently paying subscriptions – this is always the criteria we use when checking your eligibility for membership/benefits.
When you are not receiving Unison information, this usually means that you are not denoted as a “live” member on the system. This could happen for a number of reasons:
- There has been a change of address and mail sent to the old address has been returned as undeliverable, in which case a “returned” mail marker has been denoted on the record to stop any further mail being issued. Many members assume that the City Council payroll department inform us automatically of a change of name/address. They will not do this because of Data Protection implications.
- You are a member of this branch who joined 10 years ago or longer via Staffordshire County Council Unison. Some records were not transferred across to this branch and remain dormant on the Staffordshire County Council’s membership data system, to which our branch has no access.
- Simple human error on our part – for which we apologise!!
This can be corrected by simply contacting the branch office, with your membership number if you know it, all changes of name/ address and your national insurance number. We will then contact our Regional Office in Birmingham and get your record updated and reinstated.
I have notified you of a change of address recently but some information from Unison is going to the new address and some to the old. What’s happened?
Information to members is posted from both our regional offices and national office in London and via various partner organisations eg UIA Insurance. Sometimes mailing lists are printed a few weeks in advance before being used. The problem will therefore settle of its own accord.
I left employment sometime ago, am no longer a member of Unison but am still receiving mailing information.
For members who pay their subscriptions via their pay slip, these would have automatically ceased when your employment is terminated.
For a Direct Debit paying member, you would need to cancel your direct debite mandate with your bank/building society in person.
However, we are dependent upon the appropriate payroll department to provide us with accurate information on who has left each month, so that we can delete you from the Unison records system. The employer will only provide a minimum of information – initiall, surname, payroll number and NI number and departmental workplace. So, sometimes we are unable to identify a member conclusively on the records system – eg we have two records for members with the same initials and surname and no matching payroll number or NI number on either of them.
There have also been problems in the past regarding information for City Council employees which was sent to us for every leaver of the Council regardless of whether they were a member or not. This particular problem has now been resolved.
Again, if you contact the branch office, we will be more than happy to contact our Regional Office in Birmingham and delete your information.
Unison National Office is also in the process of piloting an E-Docas system where information on subscriptions for members each month it sent by our various employers to national office where it is reconciled electronically to the register so that any discrepancies can be identified promptly via an “exceptions report”. This branch has been selected as a pilot for this project and it is hoped in due course that once implemented, this system will considerably improve the accuracy of information on the membership registers.
Branch Office Contact Details:
- Telephone 01782 236750
- Email ul-stokecity@unison.org.uk
Please remember to include your name and telephone number in case of query- thank you!!
