Prospect (trade union)


Prospect is a United Kingdom trade union which represents engineers, managers, scientists and other specialists in both the public and private sectors.

History

The union was formed on 1 November 2001 by the merger of the Institution of Professionals Managers and Specialists and the Engineers and Managers Association. In 2009, Prospect endorsed a transfer of engagements from the Connect union, the union for managers in the communications sector, which became a part of Prospect on 1 January 2010. In 2012, the union absorbed the Aspect trade union. In January 2017 the broadcasting union BECTU merged with Prospect and remains a distinct sector of the union The union is not affiliated to any political party.

Membership

it has 141,000 members, employed across the areas of agriculture, broadcasting, defence, education and children's services, energy, environment, heritage, shipbuilding, telecoms and transport. It is the largest union representing professional engineers in the UK.

Governance

The president is Craig Marshall and its General Secretary since 2013 is Mike Clancy. Its principal policy-making body is the biennial National Delegate Conference. Policies determined by this conference are enacted by a National Executive Committee of 28 members, also elected biennially.

Organisation

It is organised in over 600 branches across its main sectors of employment, each branch generally corresponding to a separate employer. These include both single-site and geographically-spread groups.
It covers staff across the UK from its regional offices in Edinburgh, Douglas, Liverpool, Lutterworth, Cardiff, Bristol, Chertsey and London.
It is headquartered next to London Waterloo station in the London Borough of Lambeth.
Prospect also organises informal networks for members with a special interest in the environment or LGBT+ issues, and a young members network.

Skills

With a largely professional membership, the union has placed a strong emphasis on developing skills and opportunities for career progression. To this end it launched a standalone website called Careersmart in 2014 which provides information and podcasts on a range of subjects from career appraisals and CV writing to mentoring and pensions. Careersmart followed the 2013 launch of Prospect’s Apprenticeship App for mobile devices which saw 12,000 downloads in the first year. In 2015 Prospect launched a Gatsby Charitable Foundation-funded project, known as RegTech, to register workplace technicians.

General Secretaries