Reminder: vote in the UCU ballot: our best chance in a decade to improve your pay

Please check your email for your link to vote, or let us know here if the email hasn't arrived.

The ballot opened a few days ago and we're already seeing a strong turnout from members, but your vote is essential. 

If you and your colleagues in your college vote, you increase your branch's chances of proceeding to a postal ballot. In that postal ballot, the law dictates that your branch will need to get at least 50% of members to take part for the result to count. Show your branch can do it by voting in the online ballot today. 

When other FE branches have held postal ballots recently, they have gone on to win significantly improved offers from their employer on pay and other issues that matter to them - like the 15 colleges in England that balloted and won last autumn. 

Don't just cast your own vote. Talk to everyone you work with about why they need to vote, too, and what it means for UCU's bargaining power when colleagues come together and take action.

In places like Abingdon and Witney College, employers are telling struggling staff to use foodbanks. Enough is enough. FE staff provide a profoundly important public service to thousands of learners up and down the country and you deserve to be rewarded for it, especially at a time when the government is finally increasing funding for the sector. That is why I am determined to make the Respect FE campaign the biggest and most successful pay campaign ever.  

UCU is asking for a 10% pay increase: not just to keep up with sky-high inflation but to start catching up with the massive real-terms pay cuts you have suffered in recent years. And we are asking employers across the sector to sign up to a charter of demands to respect your professionalism. But we can only get those things if members like you indicate you would be willing to take industrial action to get them. 

Once you've voted, don't forget to keep checking our Respect FE campaign page for further updates and information. 

In solidarity, 

Jo Grady 
UCU general secretary