UCU national campaigns team

The national campaigns team is a union resource for supporting all branches and activists in their campaigning work.

Whatever it is you are campaigning on – whether you are building your local membership, supporting national campaigns or responding to a current local crisis – the national campaigns team are here to help you and your colleagues.

Who are we?

We are a team of officers with a broad range of campaigning and organising expertise based at UCU headquarters, working to support members, branches and regional offices who ask for help.

What do we provide?

1. Advice

If you have a local crisis, the national campaigns team can work with your regional office in providing expert advice to assist you in planning and delivering effective campaigns. Whether it is a local recruitment campaign, a major fight against redundancies or simply reining in an aggressive management, we have experienced officers who can assist you and your regional offices. Here's what some of the people we've worked with said:

• 'The campaigns team are like an extension of our branch - we couldn't manage without them! When we were fighting to save chemistry at Sussex, it was the flexibility of campaigns team combined with our regional officers which produced devastating materials which helped save those jobs. Most important though, they've worked with us on building capacity in the branch - finding and developing new activists - which guarantees our chances of future success.', Jim Guild, president, Sussex University UCU
• 'We found the work you did with us helpful in a number of ways. You were able to give us both the tools we needed at the time to start to look afresh at our local organisation, how to get the most from national support and also you gave us practical assistance which showed exactly what to do and gave us the confidence to do it ourselves and also moved us onto the next step in organisation and recruiting. Your professionalism and enthusiasm for the tasks, which at the time I found overwhelming, and ability to make a plan out of a crisis has especially helped.' Gillian Brown, secretary, Sheffield University UCU
• 'We have had excellent support from both the regional office and the national campaigns team. Recently we have had indispensable help from a national organiser in our recruitment efforts, and it was very productive, for example, that both regional officers and the national team were able to attend our local DAN "awayday" in October. Their combined perspectives enabled us to make some very substantial advances in our branch development planning.' Terry Hoad, President, Oxford University UCU
• 'Darlington College's recruitment day, part of the recent FE recruitment week, was an all round success. It brought together UCU members and recruited new staff. This was a valuable exercise which was fully supported from regional and national officials. Special thanks to the national organiser, Ronnie Kershaw, who came to work with us.' Eddie Adam, secretary, Darlington College
• 'Branches who get local materials and personal support from the national campaigns team feel that they really do matter and the influx of new members (to be turned into activists) revitalises some overworked Branch Officers.' Nova Gresham, regional official, South-West Region

2. Organiser support

In addition, because we know that we recruit and organise best when we are campaigning, we have a team of National Organisers who can deployed in support of branches in special circumstances.

3. Resources

We provide a huge range of resources to support members' campaigns. This includes a wide range of campaign specific materials.

If you have a specific campaign and message you want to get to your members or the outside world, we can help you. If you send us an email about your campaign, the key aims and objectives – the messages you wish to get across, our team can turn these into a wide range of bespoke campaign materials for you and your branch, including:

• posters
• placards
• flyers
• leaflets
• petitions
• stickers
• surveys
• targeted recruitment drives for specific staff groups

You can see examples of our work by clicking on any of these links:

•  Askham Bryan UCU 'stop the cuts' poster (.pdf) [49kb]
•  Essex University UCU INTO/privatisation leaflet (.pdf) [61kb]
•  Leeds University UCU 'fixed-term contract week' leaflet (.pdf) [193kb]
•  Glasgow University UCU 'save Crichton campus' leaflet (.pdf) [59kb]

4. Speed

Our experience tells us that campaigns move very fast for that reason, our priority is speed. We aim to have all materials with you within a week of a request coming in.

5. Training

The campaigns team can also provide training tailored to your campaigns. Because of our close relationship with the Developing Activist Network (DAN) and the UCU training programme, we can design and help deliver training days tailored to your needs. Particularly popular have been:

• our training events in support of branches facing privatisation
• our DAN branch or region-level events 'Making a Difference in your Workplace', designed to help new members to become more involved with their branches
• our DAN strategy days, designed to help branches to reassess their work, plan for the future and develop strategies for getting more members involved in their work

How can you get help from the national campaigns team?

Just ask. Email campaigns@ucu.org.uk and your request will get to the team. Your query will be acknowledged immediately and we will get back to you with a full response within two days.