Are you hourly paid? Find out how much your employer should be paying you - and vote in our ballot

As an hourly paid worker in higher education, I don't need to tell you how unfair and destabilising your terms of employment can get. Not getting paid on time. The uncertainty about your long term future. Employers that assume it only takes an hour or two to prepare a good lecture or seminar, when you know it can take much longer.

To have any chance of changing this state of affairs, I need you to vote YES for industrial action in our Four Fights ballot by tomorrow (Tuesday).

Tuesday is the last day you can post your vote and be sure it will arrive in time to be counted, and help your branch beat the 50% turnout threshold required to take industrial action.

UCU has released a modeller for hourly paid staff that tells you how much you should be getting based on the hours you actually work - and how much free labour you are giving your employer for each contract you are employed on. Please use it and share your results on social media if you can.

This weekend, those of you who read the Guardian will have encountered this shocking story of a UCU member who was homeless while working on hourly paid contracts. Even worse, I know from my experience of speaking to members that this won't be the first time many of you will have heard about, or perhaps personally experienced a situation like this.

Whatever your circumstances, everyone on hourly pay deserves a better deal. That is why UCU's Four Fights dispute asks employers to:

• move more hourly paid staff on to fractional contracts
• increase pay for all staff - hourly paid as well as salaried
• provide fair terms and conditions for all postgraduates who teach.

We are also demanding realistic workload models that reflect the actual time taken to prepare a lecture, or give students valuable formative feedback, or mark exam scripts. You can read some highlights here and a full breakdown here.

We have put our demands to employers in negotiations and they have refused to work with us. This state of affairs won't change unless we achieve a massive turnout and YES vote for action. That is the reality of how deeply entrenched our employers are in a business model that puts casualised staff last.

It takes high levels of collective participation and power to change things, but I believe you can do it. Take the first step and post your vote today or tomorrow.

Jo Grady
UCU general secretary