Extend and increase the mandate for action: vote in the reballot

If you still have not received your papers, you can now request a replacement at this link. 

Why we are in dispute with employers 

Last Friday UCU published a report that provides a stark reminder of what is at stake in this industrial action.

A clear majority of respondents to a recent survey of members indicated that they would consider leaving the sector in the next five years. 88% said they were not optimistic, or not at all optimistic, about the future of higher education in the UK. Employers are causing a crisis of morale and of retention by refusing to protect pensions or address years of casualisation, spiralling workloads, inequality and real-terms pay cuts. I have written to the Department for Education, to MPs and to the Education Select Committee, calling on the Committee to open an inquiry into what is happening in the sector. 

Why you are being reballoted 

The law only allows trade unions a six-month mandate for industrial action from the close of the ballot. For branches that balloted and gained a mandate last autumn, that mandate expires at the beginning of May.

Your elected representatives on UCU's higher education committee (HEC) have decided to call reballots in both disputes now, to enable us to call more action as soon as the original mandate expires. 

In both disputes we have tabled detailed and affordable proposals for resolving the dispute but employers are not interested in negotiating. The branches currently taking action are joined in these reballots by branches that didn't gain a mandate first time round - which gives us an opportunity to aim to get even more branches over the 50% turnout threshold required to gain a legal mandate, and increase our leverage over employers. 

Once the reballot results are available, there will be a sector conference open to all branches in each dispute in April, to ensure that the decisions about next steps are as democratic and have as much member input as possible. Your branch should be consulting members on the position which it will take at those sector conferences so look out for opportunities to have your say in the coming weeks. 

And finally, if your branch is not currently taking action and you haven't yet donated to the Fighting Fund, please donate as much as you can today to support colleagues taking action on behalf of staff across the sector. 

Jo Grady 
UCU general secretary