Dear XR UK Members,

2020 is the year of Acting Together. With this in mind, we would like to find out who in XR UK is in a Trades Union, or would consider joining a union in order to further the Green Agenda.

Our aim is to use the power of collective action to lobby local councils to divest their pension schemes so that members of a union can rest assured that their futures are not in dirty money.

Unions such UNISON, UNITE, and GMB have millions of members, and their voices are heard.  

Our first target is the Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS), which has £16 billion still invested in fossil fuels. The LGPS has 5 million members, and UNISON is the biggest union within this group, representing 700,000 members. So UNISON is the quickest and most straightforward route to lobby the LGPS locally.  

We want to mobilise union members to support local divest movements through their union branches at grassroots levels, as this is where the change has to begin. Pension fund members can most-effectively lobby their LGPS, as councils are responsible for the members in their funds. And it's the members’ money that’s invested, so they should have a voice.

If you are in UNISON (or could join) and in a LGPS, then we would like to know if you are interested in going to your local branch and submitting a divest motion to lobby your local authority. We would provide guidance and templates to do this (coming soon). However, first we want to scope interest and numbers of possible participants.  

Our ambition for this action is that we can have Power Together, and potentially use this route across all XR groups in the UK to lobby our Local Authorities. It would only take one UNISON member in each XR group to make this happen.

Thank you for your participation.