UNISON provides a range of legal help to union members in the UK. We offer advice and assistance not just with work issues, but in some circumstances for you and your family outside the workplace too. Download a guide to UNISON legal services

Employment problems
UNISON boasts the largest number of local union reps, branches and officers in the UK. They’re your first port of call for advice and support with problems at work. Where necessary they can refer your case to the regional office or UNISON’s specialist in-house lawyers and trade union solicitors. Legal information for reps Injury and accidents at work

UNISON has won more than £350 million in personal injury compensation for members and their family members. For members involved in work-related personal injuries, this includes assaults, industrial diseases and accidents at work, on the way to or from work or on union business. Contact UNISONdirect on 0845 355 0845 for more details.

Accidents outside work
UNISON’s personal injury service covers any accident which happens to you and your family outside the workplace, including:
Road traffic accidents
Accidents in the street
Accidents while on holiday
Slipping and tripping accidents.
Download this leaflet with information on holiday accident claims in PDF format.

If you’ve had an accident on the job or outside work during the last three years you may be entitled to compensation. Your family may also qualify for injuries outside work. In case of accident or injury you can phone UNISONdirect on 0845 355 0845 or complete the online accident form.

Free initial legal advice
UNISON members can get free initial legal advice on any matter not related to work from UNISON’s solicitors. This service entitles you to receive a 30-minute telephone interview.

The service does not apply to advice on a legal action that you are already pursuing, and does not cover Inheritance Tax issues. Members are not entitled to return for advice on the same issue under this scheme. Phone UNISONdirect on 0845 355 0845 for more details.

Work tenancy problems
You may be eligible for advice from UNISON’s solicitors if you need to live in particular accommodation as part of your job or your employer has given you accommodation as part of the job.

Wills and conveyancing
Members can use our free wills service and are eligible for cut price conveyancing. Phone UNISONdirect on 0845 355 0845 for more details.

Criminal cases
Members get legal representation if they face criminal charges arising out of their work. This includes representation for members for road traffic offences only if the members job is at risk following a conviction and excludes drink driving offences.

To access this service you should complete a CR form with your branch or alternatively contact UNISONdirect on 0845 355 0845 yourself and thereafter complete the CR form with your branch to ensure assistance continues.

Additionally in an emergency outside UNISONdirect hours you can call the criminal helpline on 0800 587 7530.

Immigration
UNISON can provide advice or represent members who experience immigration problems that threaten their employment.

Clinical negligence
UNISON offers a free initial screening service for members who have been affected by clinical negligence.

More Information

Thursday 16th May 2013 – 05:00am

Eleven nurses signed up to join UNISON when UNISON Local Organisers Paul Horan and Jamie Martin visited wards during last nights night shift. They were accompanied by the Branch Communication Officer Terry Harris and are pictured below with the staff on ward 32

Click the link below to follow the progress of UNISON’s recruitment fortnight throughout the NHS.  CLICK HERE

Branch Officers and Stewards will be walking around all our of hospital sites for the next two weeks on a recruitment drive. after the two weeks are over, your unison reps will be available 24/7

Robert Baughan, UNISON National Officer for Health & Safety said:

“This is a great day for the protection of healthcare workers from sharps injuries and the potential of contracting a deadly blood borne virus such as HIV or Hepatitis C, and the culmination of UNISON’s campaign for safer needles (UNISON played a leading role in drafting and agreeing the European Directive).

“Employers working with trade unions need to ensure that the new regulations are applied without exception in the workplace so that they are not putting workers and patients at risk.

“Preventing the unnecessary use of sharps, using safer sharps and disposing of them safely will all help to dramatically reduce that risk.

“We will now be working to ensure the same protections that apply to healthcare workers, will be applied to workers in the waste, cleaning and social care sectors.”

The new Regulations require healthcare employers to:

- Avoid the unnecessary use of sharps
- Use safer sharps, incorporating protection mechanisms
- Prevent the recapping of needles
- Use secure containers for safe disposal of medical sharps
- Work with trade unions to protect workers’ health and safety, create a safe working environment through the use and choosing of equipment (including sharps safety devices), training, information and awareness raising.

The everyday work of healthcare staff puts them at risk of serious infections from more than 30 potentially dangerous pathogens, including hepatitis B (HBV), hepatitis C (HCV) and HIV, through injuries with contaminated needles and other sharps.

The majority of these sharps injuries are preventable with the provision of effective training, safer working procedures and safety-engineered medical devices that shield or retract the needle/sharp after use.

It is estimated that there are around 100,000 sharps injuries in the UK each year and four workers have died as a result of occupationally acquired HIV from a sharps injury.

The new Regulations took effect on 11 May 2013, and similar new legislation will also apply across the whole of Europe to implement the mandatory measures in EU Council Directive 2010/32 /EU.

Existing legislation has largely been ignored or misinterpreted, and as a result proved ineffective. A copy of the regulations and the accompanying guidance can be downloaded from the HSE web site.

UNISON is a leading member European BioSafety Network (EBN) which is heading the campaign to get the provisions of the European Directive applied to all sectors where workers are in danger of being infected through sharps injuries. A copy of the EBN guidance on the directive can be found on the EBN website.

Managers toolkit for implementing this new Law. – click here

The union’s welfare charity, There For You, has set up a limited fund to help with school uniform costs with a one-off payment of up to £120, and is now accepting applications from members on low incomes.

To apply, and to find out if you may be eligible, download the application form [pdf file]. Alternatively, you can contact your UNISON branch.

You will need to submit completed application forms by 5 July 2013.

http://www.unison.org.uk/welfare/

Oxford University Press (OUP) and UNISON are delighted to provide UNISON members with this exclusive offer to purchase OUP publications at a 20% discount through the UNISON Book Club.

The establishment of the Book Club builds on the long-standing relationship between UNISON and OUP in seeking to provide top quality guides to nurses and other health professionals in their work – we hope you find it of value.

How to Order
Please use the navigation on the bottom of the page to find the titles you want, or select from the featured titles below. Your final discounted price for each item will show up in your shopping basket after you have clicked on the ‘add to basket’ button on each individual product page.

See full range Here

Featured book

They will be making an award to the trade unionist who represents the best aspects of being a health and safety representative. This is not intended to be a competitive award, and the TUC is keen to develop this award over the coming years.

The award will be made at the 2013 Congress, which takes place in Bournemouth from 8-11 September.

In addition to getting the consent of the nominee and completing the attached form on their behalf, please ensure nominees complete the equality monitoring page and waiver at the end of the form.

Complete the application form and send it to the UNISON health and Safety Unit by email healthandsafety@unison.co.uk or post (address below) before 10am Monday 14 May 2013.

Postal address:

UNISON Health and Safety Unit
UNISON Centre
130 Euston Road
London
NW1 2AY

In particular, conference decided to prioritise increases for the low paid and to campaign to end the pay freeze.

James Anthony from the health service group executive commended the NHS in Scotland for its commitment to pay the living wage and pledged a fight to extend that coverage across the UK.

Gordon McKay of the Scottish health committee, pointed out that the 17 richest people in Britain could wipe out the nation’s debt, while healthcare staff throughout the UK relied on food banks. “This is the reality of life in Tory Britain,” he said.

However, job security often overshadowed pay as a concern for members, and that the union needed to build a campaign for action on pay to ensure that the leadership and the members were at one on this issue.

The need to defend the structures and conditions of Agenda for Change, were also agreed and conference heavily defeated an amendment that attempted to censure the executive for accepting changes to terms and conditions.

These are loved ones like Cameron Minshull, a 16-year old lad, only a few weeks into his first job, killed in an incident involving an industrial lathe. The HSE Director whose desk this came across has said he thought he was reading a tale from Victorian times. But this was no tale of a bygone era, it is a modern day horror story.

For his family “it still does not seem real, it’s like a bad dream”. But this is no work of fiction. Because, once upon a time our loved ones left for work, and for them – and therefore us – there will be no living happily ever after.

Yet this ConDem government continues to push a narrative through which they attempt to convince the public that health and safety legislation amounts to a burden on business, or is a barrier to our young people gaining work experience.

The truth of it is that lack of good health and safety often proves an ultimate and deadly barrier to young people gaining work experience, just as it did for 17 year-old Steven Burke who fell 30ft to his death while working at a water treatment plant or 18 year-old Lewis Murphy who died after suffering 60% burns when he was engulfed in a massive fireball at the garage he started working at on leaving school. His mum and dad found out in court that, as their son was being taken to hospital, he had asked the paramedic if he was going to die. That is a real and enduring burden.

Those of us whose lives are far emptier for the loss of our parents, children, siblings or partners, we bear the burden.

But proactive, preventative inspections have been dramatically cut and are now banned in the majority of workplaces which are wrongly called “low risk” as over half of all recorded deaths occur in these sectors. Legislation is being slashed. Approved Codes of Practice are being scrapped and replaced with toothless guidance. Blacklisting for raising health and safety concerns is still rife and the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) is ordered by the government to consider the economy before safety and lives.

Well we FACKers will not have health and safety portrayed by politicians and the media as some sort of Jekyll and Hyde character: the villain of the piece in some quarters or the figure of fun deployed for comedic effect in others. Health and safety is not about the fun police, triangular flapjacks or bonkers conkers. It is about a young man who should have celebrated his 7th wedding anniversary this month who was robbed of the opportunity to walk up the aisle. It is about those who are robbed of the opportunity to see children grow up or grandchildren be born. It is about young boys like Samuel Adams, aged 6, who are robbed of the opportunity to even dream of what they might be when they grow up.

So it is no wonder we FACKers feel upset and angry at repeatedly reading that a death “could and should have been prevented had the employer ensured”: that proper risk assessments were undertaken; or that adequate training was provided; or that machinery was properly guarded; or that its own written procedures were adhered to; or that a safe system of work was being followed. But, because health and safety is portrayed as a meddlesome intrusion or tiresome impediment to getting the job done, these fundamentals are far too often ignored and loved ones pay the ultimate price.

Understand that these are very rarely “accidents at work”, because an accident waiting to happen is no accident. And appreciate that deaths caused by work are far more common than HSE figures would have you believe. Do not be duped into thinking the HSE’s headline-grabbing 173 workers killed last year is anything like the whole story. The Hazards Campaign counts the real cost of work in death, injury and illness: around 1400 killed in work-related incidents (not accidents); and up to 50,000 who die as a result of work-related illness. That’s a total of around 140 work-related deaths a day, 6 an hour.

So we stand here today remembering all loved ones who die because of work. But at very heart of FACK’s work is the desire to prevent others losing their lives or their loved ones in incidents which could and should have been prevented.

While FACK families bear the burden of poor health and safety regulation and enforcement, we also feel a tremendous sense of responsibility to you and yours. So join with us in renewing our commitment to take on the politicians and the enforcement authorities, fighting like hell for the living, and helping ensure that you or yours do not become the next chapter in this story!

Staff in local government, the NHS and security, transport and leisure industries will be first to be targeted as the world’s first finger-touch system to detect alcohol is launched.

Dave Prentis, general secretary of Unison, condemned the move as ‘a sledgehammer to crack a nut’.

He added: ‘If workers have a problem with alcohol, their employers should not be relying on a gadget to entrap them but should be providing them with proper support.’

Read the full story here.