1) Pay Ballot: Vote Early, Vote Now
You should have received your ballot paper.
UCU is recommending you vote yes, for strike action and for action short of a strike. Voting for both forms of action gives our negotiators the strongest possible mandate in our present pay negotiations.
If you haven’t received your ballot paper by today, please let membership@ucu.org.uk know. Let ucu-office@bristol.ac.uk know, too.
Whatever your decision, please vote before 4th May! Turnout is critical.
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2) Why should I vote in the ballot?
Across the HE sector, university staff are underpaid, have unmanageable workloads and are subject to top-down, target-driven performance management, while vice-chancellors, principals and other top staff are earning almost SEVEN times as much as the average worker.
Employers have offered a derisory pay increase of 1%.
YOUR pay has decreased by 14.5% in just six years compared to the rate of inflation – while the cost of living keeps rising.
SHAMEFUL GENDER INEQUALITY: female academics are paid £6,103 per year LESS than male counterparts.
NO JOB SECURITY: over TWO THIRDS of research staff are stuck on fixed-term contracts.
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3) What can I do?
Vote! A low turnout is in no UCU member’s interest.
If you vote yes, then be prepared to take industrial action in May.
Tweet, post and share these links:
https://www.ucu.org.uk/whyshouldivote
https://www.ucu.org.uk/we-need-your-vote
Write a few lines on why you’re voting yes for our Bristol UCU blog:
https://bristolucu.wordpress.com/
Come to our AGM on 11th May.
Pay is no. 1 on the agenda. We have a speaker, UCU National Executive Committee member Dominique Lauterburg, who will speak to the campaign, the negotiations and potential action.
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4) What do I need to know?
- The ballot closes on 4th May. Any industrial action would start w/c 23rd May.
- The rationale behind balloting now is to influence our national pay negotiations.
- Too often we have waited and waited for a decent offer, let the pay negotiations play out, and then end up in the summer where we (and all other parties) pretty much started.
- By sending a clear mandate to employers now, making clear that paying us less and asking us to do more is no longer ‘sustainable’, then we can influence our employers, make them reconsider their treatment of staff as a cost that needs driving down, as an area that requires sustained, prolonged disinvestment.
- Our national meetings with employers are on 28th April and 19th May.
- Make our voice heard at those meetings; make them genuine negotiations.
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Vote early, vote now!
Your Newsflash Team