online voting Archives - TUC Digital Lab

How ready are our union branches for electronic balloting?

This week has seen unions get more rights around elections and strike votes, with the government overturning a decades-old ban on unions voting by any other means than post. From 25 August 2026, we can now consult our members in ways that the majority of them would expect from us – using email, SMS or other electronic means.

TUC Education ran a webinar with trade union reps, looking at what’s in the new rules, and how ready we think we are for it. Over 1,400 signed up for it, and we got some really useful feedback back from the reps who took part. Here are a few reflections on what we heard on the call.

The campaign for online union balloting

Probably the defining issue for unions over the last year has been the government’s Trade Union Act. It’s a wide-ranging collection of restrictions on union’s rights and duties, that make it harder for unions to organise and represent their members, and that undermines British workers’ right to strike.

We’re proud of the concerted and unified campaign that unions and union members mounted against it during its long parliamentary passage. We managed to secure extensive concessions and defeats to some of its worst measures, cutting off harmful proposals that struck at unions’ finances and organisation.

But we also won an interesting positive change from the Government, one that they had tried their hardest to resist. They’ve now conceded an independent review into allowing unions to use online voting for strikes and statutory ballots. Continue reading The campaign for online union balloting