New Deal for FE: ballots have dropped, vote YES

It's been a huge week. Your postal ballots have been landing over the past few days. On Tuesday 14 October we held a fantastic UCU Live event, with leaders from across the trade union movement bringing solidarity. You can click here to catch up.

This ballot is not just about demanding fair pay and action on workloads, it is about fighting for a properly funded, respected further education sector - without that, there will be no social or economic renewal of our communities.

The offer from Association of Colleges (AoC) fails us and it fails the sector. It doesn't close the growing pay gap with schoolteachers. It ignores our spiraling workload crisis. And it leaves us stuck with a broken bargaining system that isn't delivering for staff or students.

When you vote YES, you'll be voting for:

• A proper pay rise: not another year of falling yet further behind schoolteachers
• Action on workloads, underpinned by proper binding agreements
• National collective bargaining, ensuring what we agree with employers is actually implemented in every single college. 

We know you are working, on average, two days a week for free. We know pay has fallen by around 35% over the last decade. And we know there's new funding in the system--funding that should go on giving staff the pay rise and conditions you deserve.

That's why we're balloting.

Next week, I'll be out meeting members and on Thursday 23 October (20:00) I will be live on LBC taking calls from the public--and I want to hear directly from you about the reality of working FE right now.

This ballot will be won through our collective strength. Every one-to-one conversation, every returned ballot, every show of solidarity matters.

Vote YES as soon as your ballot drops. Then talk to your colleagues and make sure they do the same. If you have already voted by post, please click here to let UCU know; this will be an enormous help with the union's 'get the vote out' activities

Let's show the employers we won't accept being disregarded, underpaid, and overworked any longer.

Together, we can win a New Deal for FE.

Vote early. Vote YES. Let's win this, together. 

In solidarity

Jo Grady
UCU general secretary