Use of Personal Information

Use of Personal Information

Data Controller

Nationwide Group Staff Union (NGSU) is a data controller as defined in the UK General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018.

Our Legal Basis for Collecting Personal Information

We process the personal information of members and former members which is necessary to carry out the legitimate activities of a trade union. This includes providing services relevant to membership and to fulfil our legal obligations under trade union legislation.

NGSU Membership – Personal Information

When you join NGSU we will ask you to provide personal information about you and about your employment or retirement. We will process this information to determine your class of membership and to provide you with services that are available to union members. We will also invite you to provide some information about you that will help us understand the diversity of our membership but you can choose not to share these details with us.

Union membership is special category data and we use appropriate levels of security to ensure your personal information is held securely and treated with the utmost confidentiality.

How We Use Your Personal Information

We collect and keep your personal information in order to carry out our functions as an independent trade union and to provide you with membership services and to comply with certain statutory obligations.

Your personal information will be used for a range of Union activities including;

• the maintenance of records to determine your membership class and subscription rate
• the collection of subscriptions
• to support you with employment issues and disputes including keeping notes and documents relevant to advice we have given
• to support you with other issues such as injury claims
• to send you communications about the Union and our services and benefits
• to conduct ballots and elections
• monitoring for diversity and equality purposes

Keeping Your Information Up-To-Date

We may contact you at your home (or workplace address if we do not have a valid home address), by telephone or email. Please ensure that your contact details are accurate and amend them as necessary through your NGSU website account or by contacting the Union office.

Retention of Personal Information

All information (updated as appropriate) will be kept throughout your membership.

If you end your membership, we will hold your information for a reasonable period after you leave (normally six years). We keep your information in case you wish to query an element of your membership; require access to data for any legal action; wish to re-join NGSU or to access any post-membership benefits. We also use leaver information to help us understand membership trends so we can identify ways to improve the support we offer members.

Who Has Access to Your Personal Information?

Ordinarily, your personal information will only be available to NGSU employees. However, where necessary to assist members in specific cases, relevant extracts of that information may be shared with accredited Disciplinary Officers or elected Officials and Representatives. Calls with one of our employed team members may be listened to live by another colleague for training and development purposes. They will not play an active role in the conversation. Your call will not be recorded.

Sharing Your Personal Information with Nationwide

If you are an employee of Nationwide or a member of the Nationwide Pension Fund we may share certain information with the Society or the Fund (as appropriate).

• Collection of subscriptions: If you choose to pay your NGSU subscriptions by payroll deduction we will need to disclose your membership and employee number to Nationwide or the Fund, and share appropriate data for the purposes of collecting your subscriptions. If you prefer, you can pay your subscriptions directly to NGSU by Direct Debit.
• Individual Representation: If you ask us to provide individual representation services we may discuss details of your circumstances with relevant Nationwide employees, subject to your consent.

Sharing Your Personal Information with other Organisations

We will share your name and address with other organisations to assist with the provision of membership services, for example, to send you our member magazine, to seek to locate you if mail is returned as ‘No Trace’ and we have not been able to make contact with you, and to conduct an election or ballot in accordance with our statutory obligations.

If we are supporting you in respect of an employment dispute and we determine the need to obtain legal advice, we will, with your consent, share your personal information with our appointed solicitors, for the purposes of obtaining advice and, where appropriate, representation relevant to the dispute.

If you register a claim using our personal injury and advice compensation scheme, we will disclose your membership to our appointed solicitors, for the purpose of confirming your eligibility for this service.

Where the Union uses the services of other organisations, they are contractually obliged to process your data on behalf of the Union as data processor and in a secure and confidential manner under our strict instructions.

We do not transfer data to third countries or international organisations.

NGSU does not provide or sell membership data to other companies for marketing purposes and third parties will not normally be allowed to contact you directly for marketing purposes.

Some union benefits require members to register separately with a third party to access the benefit. If you choose to register directly with a third party, they will be the Data Controller for purposes of processing any data you provide to them.

Union Communications

From time to time we will send you communications about the Union’s activity, including details of collective bargaining negotiations; discussions held at our National Conference; changes to subscriptions and about the benefits and services we offer. These will include communications sent to your registered home address, such as our member magazine; and monthly newsletter by e-mail to your home or work e-mail. We may use the information you provide for analysis and marketing purposes and to contact you with details of member benefits that we feel may be of particular interest.

Some of our communications will include details of services offered by other organisations. If you do not wish to receive these communications, please write to our office at Middleton Cheney. We will continue to send you communications about matters where we have to fulfil statutory obligations, for example, ballots and elections of Union officers.

Web Chat

We use a third party provider, Zendesk, to supply and support our Web Chat service, which we use to answer member enquiries in real time.

If you use the Web Chat service we will collect your name, email address and the contents of your Web Chat session (including your IP address). If the Web Chat relates to your employment and we’re giving advice, we’ll keep a transcript of the Chat as part of your membership record on our internal database and will delete the transcript on the Zendesk system.  All other transcripts where we’ve provided basic information, such as details of member benefits, will be deleted.

You can request a transcript of your Web Chat session using the ‘options’ field at the bottom of the Web Chat box.

Nationwide Building Society – New Employees

NGSU is the sole trade union with recognition rights for employees of Nationwide Building Society and terms and conditions are covered by a collective bargaining agreement between the two parties.  Nationwide provides NGSU with information about new employees and we contact them with details about the benefits of Union membership and the collective agreement which covers their employment terms.  We write with an invitation to join the Union and follow-up with two reminders during the normal six-month probation period.  At the end of this period we delete the information of employees who have not joined.

Your Rights

You have the right to request:

• a copy of the personal information we hold about you
• a correction of your personal information
• to have personal information erased if the information is no longer relevant to the purposes for which we have collected it
• to transfer data to another organisation (‘data portability’)

We will deal with any requests in accordance with the requirements and timescales set out in the GDPR.

Contact

If you have any questions about the personal information we hold or wish to exercise any of your rights outlined above, please send your request to: The Data Protection Officer, NGSU, Middleton Farmhouse, 37 Main Road, Middleton Cheney, OX17 2QT.

Return to Join Union Online

Version 3.3: 1 Dec 2021