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UCU national ballot opens today – vote early and vote YES to industrial action

Katrina Navickas

UCU national ballot opens today – vote early and vote YES to industrial action

 

we are the university vote early vote yes

 

Dear member

 

UCU’s national ballot over pay and terms and conditions opens today. You should receive your ballot paper very soon, and we recommend you vote early and vote YES to industrial action (strike action/action short of strike).

 

What is the national ballot about? Three things:

 

  1. Pay

 

The offer is 1.4% but inflation is 3.8%, yet another real terms pay cut, and means we’ve suffered a real terms pay cut since the recession of 2007-9 and the following austerity years of 20-30% depending on whether you use CPI or RPI measures (the latter inclusive of mortgage interest payments and council tax). By any measure, this is a drastic cut.

 

In addition, the news locally at UH has not been good:

  • 50% parking charge rise: in August, UH increased parking campus charges by a manifestly unfair 50%, made even more unjust by the 1.4% offer. If you haven’t yet done so, please sign the petition against the parking rise (hosted by our Unison colleagues on their website).
  • Outer London Weighting (OLW): at his first introductory talk, the new VC, Professor Anthony Woodman, was asked whether UH would pay OLW given (a) the high regional cost of living and (b) the weighting of over £4,000 per annum paid by the Royal Veterinary College in Hatfield. The VC said UH would not pay any weighting.
  • Hardship payment: at a staff Q&A this year, senior management stated that, unlike last year, UH would not make any hardship payment in 2025-26.

We have options. We can be disheartened by this – or we can vote for industrial action so university employers don’t just thank us for our “hard work, dedication and commitment” (VC email ‘Herts achieves top 50 UK university ranking’ of 13 September) but also start to reward us fairly.

 

  1. Redundancies

 

Universities have announced cuts of over 15,000 jobs in the last year in what is a real crisis in the sector. UCU is balloting over its call for a national agreement to halt redundancies at all universities.

 

Locally at UH, there have been redundancies with some taking place at the moment, though not currently on the scale elsewhere. A national agreement on redundancies is therefore urgently needed.

 

  1. Protecting national agreements

 

To quote UCU General Secretary Jo Grady, this concerns “the continuing disregard some institutions have for the protection of national agreements” between employers and unions regarding our terms and conditions of work.

 

Locally at UH, this is very relevant as we face breaches of national agreements and their local versions as well as of our contracts on how our appraisals and teaching observations are undertaken (as discussed at our recent branch meeting – further email on this to follow).

 

Unison is also balloting 

 

Our national ballot is taking place at the same time as Unison’s national ballot of our professional colleagues. A joint ballot with a view to joint industrial action is therefore the idea to get university employers to return to the negotiating table with fair proposals for both academic and professional staff and the sector as a whole.

 

We urge all members to vote early and to vote YES in the ballot. A strong ballot result is the only way to halt the drastic deterioration in our pay and our terms and conditions.

 

In solidarity

 

Dragan Plavsic

President

On behalf of UHUCU Branch Committee