RMT PRIVACY NOTICE
The National Union of Rail, Maritime & Transport Workers (RMT) understands the importance of protecting personal information and is committed to complying with the General Data Protection Regulation 2016/679 (GDPR) and Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA). It is also committed to creating and maintaining a culture of awareness, transparency and accountability by demonstrating compliance with the principles set out in the Regulation.
This page sets out what you can expect from the RMT in how we collect and process any data about you.
1. Data controller
Any personal data you provide to us is controlled by the RMT. We are registered as a data controller with the Information Commissioner's Office under reference Z6278414.
If you have any queries about how we gather, and use your personal data then you can get in touch with our Data Protection Officer by post at:
Data Protection Officer
RMT
Unity House
39 Chalton Street
London
NW1 1JD
Or via email: DPO@rmt.org.uk – please type ‘For the attention of the Data Protection Officer’ in the subject line of your email.
2. Your rights over your personal data
You have a number of specific rights over how we collect and use your personal data. You have the right to:
1. be informed about the collection and use of your personal data (e.g. in this privacy notice);
2. access a copy of your personal data, along with information on what personal data we hold, how and why we use it, who we share it with, how long we keep it for and whether it has been used for any automated decision making. Should you wish to access a copy of your personal data free of charge, please write to the RMT Data Protection Officer at the address above, enclosing evidence of your identity;
3. rectify the information we hold by asking us to change any incorrect or incomplete data we hold about you;
4. erasure i.e. to request the deletion of your personal data where it is no longer necessary for us to use it, where you have withdrawn consent, or where we have no lawful basis for holding it;
5. restrict the processing of your personal data we use about you where you have asked for it to be deleted or where you have objected to our use of it;
6. data portability, allowing you to obtain and reuse your personal data for your own purposes across different services;
7. object to the processing of your data in certain circumstances;
8. not be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing, including profiling;
9. withdraw your consent for us to use your data at any time, where you have opted in to our processing of your data in the past;
10. make a complaint to us about how we have used your personal data.
Further information regarding your rights are available on the Information Commissioner’s Office website: https://ico.org.uk
Please contact our Data Protection Officer by post or email at the address above should you wish to exercise any of these rights. Confirmation of your identity may need to be in our possession in order to respond in full.
If you believe that we have not complied with your data protection rights, you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (the regulator for privacy/data protection legislation) using the following details:
Information Commissioner's Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF
Telephone: 0303 123 1113
Fax: 01625 524510
3. What information and data do we collect?
RMT may collect a variety of personal data from you, as part of your interactions with us. This could include, but is not restricted to:
• Your IP address;
• Your name;
• Contact details, phone number, email address, postal address;
• Your employer, work location, grade;
• Your union membership;
• Positions that you hold (or were nominated for) during your membership (e.g. local or health and safety representative), including those within RMT committees and forums;
• Financial information;
• Photos you upload to our site;
• Comments you submit or publish with us;
• Attendance at our events, conferences and courses;
Our website does not use cookies to collect personally identifiable information about you. Further detail is available on our website at https://www.rmt.org.uk/privacy/cookies
4. What we do with your data
We process and maintain your information under our legitimate interests in order to carry out our core functions as a trade union, provide our full range of services, all relevant information and comply with certain statutory obligations.
We use your information to fulfil any contract you make with us and supply you with the information or services that you want to use. Dependent upon the nature of your engagement with us, this may include, but is not restricted to, contacting/supplying you with information by post, telephone, e-mail and/or SMS in relation to:
• Membership and your participation in industrial action ballots, referenda, elections, subscriptions, services and benefits;
• Union related or supported campaigns & events;
• Education courses and opportunities;
• Press releases relating to union activity and the transport industry;
We gather information on whether you have received or interacted with emails that we send. This helps us improve our content and deliver more relevant emails to you.
We monitor analytical data for statistical purposes on our social media channels.
We also use our legitimate interest to process photos where you are captured in a crowd/large group as part of our trade union activities.
We do not directly store your credit card details ourselves, but instead use separate payment processors to take data and complete transactions on our behalf. As a member of RMT, we store your bank details on our internal database. The information is stored securely and used for the purpose of deducting your subscriptions or reimbursing you as required under our Rule Book.
As an RMT member, you will receive updates by email, SMS, post, telephone or instant messaging relevant to our core activities.
Sometimes we will be obliged to process your personal information due to legal obligations which are binding on us. We will only ever do so when strictly necessary.
5. How long do we keep your data
All information (updated as appropriate), will be kept throughout your association with us and to the extent necessary to deliver the services we provide.
All information relating to your Membership of the RMT, the services you have utilised and the positions you may hold within it are held indefinitely as a historical record and to the extent necessary to access any post-membership benefits and ensure compliance with our Rule Book. This does not affect your individual rights over your data, but compliance with your request will be carefully assessed to enable us to fulfil our obligations under our Rules.
Financial information relating to invoices and payments to suppliers/providers are destroyed after 6 years.
6. Disclosing your information
We will not disclose your personal information to third parties unless we are required to do so by law, or unless we have your explicit consent.
Where you are giving consent for us to share your information with other organisations in order to receive additional services and information, this will be made clear to you at the time.
With respect to preferential membership benefits, these services are provided by carefully selected and RMT endorsed partners with whom we have a strict data processing agreement that meets data protection laws and regulations. Where consent is received, it will be processed in a secure and confidential manner as instructed by RMT. Should you utilise the preferential benefits offered by RMT endorsed partners, you will be asked to make a separate contract with them for this purpose.
Should you choose to publish or share parts of your information with others when using RMT’s official social media platforms, you have control of any data you choose to publish or share using these platforms.
We accept no responsibility should you choose to publish or share parts of your information with others when using unofficial social media platforms.
We may need to disclose your information to regulatory bodies, government bodies, or law enforcement agencies. This will be upon request only, and only when required to do so in order to satisfy legal obligations which are binding on us.
7. Storing your information and security
The information you provide to us will be stored and processed by RMT on servers based in the UK.
We take all reasonable steps to ensure your data is treated securely and in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulations 2018. Security measures are in place to protect your information from access by unauthorised persons and against unlawful processing, accidental loss, destruction and damage. In particular, we have internal policies and procedures to ensure only those required to access your data are able to do so.
However, you acknowledge that communications sent via the Internet cannot be guaranteed to be completely secure.
For some purposes it may be necessary to share your personal data with a third party data processor. Data processors are third parties who provide services to us as set out below. We have contracts in place with our data processors. This means that they cannot do anything with your personal information unless we have instructed them to do it. They will not share your personal information with any organisation apart from us. They will hold it securely and retain it for the period we instruct.
Those organisations who carry out trade union related data processing activities on RMT's behalf, include those carrying out:
election administration
maintaining and updating membership information
Validating your membership when contacting to access benefits [for example, RMT Credit Union Ltd].
8. Children’s data
For the purpose of providing a financial benefit to orphans of our members under Rule, it can become necessary to process data of a person under the age of 16 (or up to 21 if in full-time education within our Rules). Whoever holds parental responsibility for the child will be required to provide the child’s personal data on a specific form. Consent to process a child’s personal data is deemed to have been given on receipt of the signed form.
If we come to discover, or have reason to believe, that you are 15 or under and your personal information is not held for the purposes of fulfilling our functions under our Rule Book, we will delete that information within a reasonable period and withhold our services accordingly.
9. Changes to your personal information
If your personal information changes or you find that any of the information that we hold about you is inaccurate, please contact us as soon as possible. Please use the most appropriate means dependent upon our engagement with you:
RMT Members can:
• use their ‘eMembership’ account as accessed from www.rmt.org.uk;
• contact our Membership Department on membership@rmt.org.uk / 020 7387 4771;
• contact their Branch Secretary using the details supplied in their welcome pack;
• post their information to RMT Membership Department, Unity House, 39 Chalton Street, London NW1 1JD.
External parties and contacts can:
• email info@rmt.org.uk;
• telephone our main switchboard on 020 7387 4771 and ask to be transferred to the relevant department.
Please ensure that all changes required are clearly indicated.
10. Third party websites
Our Privacy Notice only applies to websites and online services operated by the RMT. If you follow a link from one of our websites to one that is operated by somebody else, or you participate using platforms not operated by the RMT, you will no longer be covered by this policy. We do not accept responsibility for the collection of your personal data by those websites or platforms and strongly recommended that you check their privacy policy before submitting any personal data to them.
11. Changes to our privacy policy
Our privacy policy is reviewed annually or when a need has been identified, whichever is sooner. Any changes to our privacy policy will be posted on our website.
Unity House
Tel: 020 7387 4771
Email: