Unite is one of Britain's biggest trades unions with 1.42 million members working in both the public and private sectors, employed by universities, NHS, non-profit making organisations, IT companies and the service sector.
At Imperial, Unite represents technical, professional and support service staff and also biomedical and nursing staff on our medical sites.
Unite negotiates with the College alongside the other trade unions (UCU and Unison) to improve pay, terms and conditions and to ensure fair and equal treatment for staff.
Strike action and pay negotiations
In autumn 2025, Imperial's Unite the Union branch - along with our colleagues in Unison and UCU - voted to take strike action in dispute against the university's 2025-26 pay award.
You can read more about that here.
During October and November, the Unite branch will be asking members to join picket lines around the university on specific days to cause disruption to the work of the university, to highlight how our world-leading university has failed to provide even inflation-matching salary increases, meaning that people working at Imperial are effectively getting a real-terms pay cut.
This pay award alone means that all staff are working for a week for free based on inflation (currently over 4%, when the pay award is 2%).
Going back to 2018, the last time the university's pay award was in line with long-term inflation figures, staff are now working a month for free, providing education to more students, delivering more services and having climbed the QS World Rankings (from 8th to 2nd) in the same period.