For the sake of all staff at Durham, you need to vote in this ballot. So do your colleagues.

We’re in very hard circumstances, but any way you look at it, staff are in the best position if all the HE unions currently balloting succeed in beating the anti-union turnout thresholds.

Below is a categorised list of 26 reasons why it’s so important (for all staff at Durham) to vote and maximise our vote.

Pitch your own reasons for voting here for blogs, social media, or to expand this list.

Which of the below reasons do you find the most persuasive? You might share some of these arguments with colleagues. The single best way to ensure we get a strong turnout is for members to talk directly to other members they know. If you can confirm any votes, email here to quickly confirm the vote. If you can help with wider Get the Vote Out efforts in your department or another department, email your presidents and branch admin/organiser.

Similarly, the most effective union recruitment is directly inviting someone to join. Any staff member not already in a union can join UCU. If they join by 5pm November 20, they can vote in the ballot.

Key ballot dates and facts are here.

Summary:

• We need leverage.
• We need national as well as local leverage.
• We’re not asking the world, just that employers stop making things worse.
• Act in solidarity with other unions, branches, and colleagues—don’t leave them in the lurch.
• Make your union stronger, not weaker.
• This ballot gives us (and the other unions) options at Durham.

We need leverage

1. As a union we need leverage, which comes from strong turnouts, clear majorities, and strong steers toward action. When we don’t have it, employers always make things worse.
2. Whenever we have had industrial action mandates, we have won victories. Staff at Durham have materially better job security, pay, pensions, and conditions because of UCU industrial action mandates. Union action is the main way anything improves in our sector or employer. Don’t just take my word for it: read the receipts.
3. On the flip side, when we’ve lost industrial action mandates, the employer has stopped making offers. Recall the Phase 1 agreement during national industrial action in 2023. Why do you think there was no Phase 2?
4. This ballot is a way to build back to UK-wide leverage, and will help us build a stronger union, grow our membership, and increase member engagement.

We need national as well as local leverage

5. Local disputes alone can’t solve everything. The issues don’t occur in a vacuum. And in our sector, some matters are reserved to national (UK) bargaining, while other matters are only negotiated locally. We need both national and local negotiations, and history tells us these negotiations are only effective when we have leverage.
6. The jobs crisis needs national resolution. We stopped compulsory redundancies at Durham last year. We didn’t stop all job losses and we’re now feeling the painful effects, especially on workload. We’re preparing to resist any future job losses with the local dispute, learning from the redundancies dispute. But Durham’s cuts are happening in a UK-wide context with sector-wide problems. A core demand of this national ballot is a national agreement to prevent redundancies at all universities and protect jobs, programmes, and disciplines.
7. Pay erosion has dropped salaries by more than a grade since 2008. The top of grade 7 (spine 36) in 2008, in real terms (CPIH inflation), earned more than the top of grade 8 in 2025 (spine 43). That’s a whole grade taken from us, or a 24.8% real-terms pay cut—while the VC’s base salary is 6% higher in real terms. For some roles or on other inflation measures, the gap is even wider. The insulting 1.4% pay offer will erode pay further: it’s a real-terms pay cut of 2.6% in a single year. Pay erosion means a more elitist Higher Education sector and lower paid Durham staff struggling to make ends meet while their workloads have increased. All sector unions are balloting to ensure all staff can afford working in the university. This, too, needs national resolution, as the overall pay spine is negotiated UK-wide, while application of the pay spine in pay grades is decided locally.
8. Having strong, fighting HE unions also supports our push for sector funding reform. We’re not technically in dispute with the UK’s governments as they’re not our employer, but they’re watching. We need to show employers and governments they can’t solve sector funding issues by cutting our jobs, pay, and conditions.
9. We can negotiate both locally and nationally with a national industrial action mandate. We’ve won our biggest local victories in recent years against the background of national industrial action mandates. Another mandate will give your negotiators further leverage.
10. Work on Durham UCU’s local dispute off the back of the local claim is ongoing. Deep engagement with this national ballot helps us locally. Members, reps and branch officials will take account of the national ballot result and potential industrial action when deciding on local ballot and action plans. So will the employer.

We’re not asking the world, just that employers stop making things worse

11. We know the sector is in crisis. We cannot accept that the solution is cutting our jobs, pay, and conditions. Yet we are also not asking the world. The core demands for this dispute are to prevent things getting worse:
    1. Stop further job cuts. The jobs crisis needs national resolution. We are seeking a national agreement to halt redundancies at all universities and protect disciplines. To stop further job cuts at Durham, we need to push hard on this both nationally and locally. Redundancies anywhere are a threat to jobs everywhere.
    2. Stop further pay erosion. A worker at the top of grade 7 has had a 24.8% real-terms pay cut since 2008—more than a full grade (CPIH inflation). The employers are offering a further real-terms cut of 2.6% this year alone. We are seeking a pay offer that doesn’t make things worse.
    3. Stop defaulting on agreements. We are seeking protection of existing national agreements over terms and conditions, as employers across the UK are trying to squeeze more out of staff, including changes to workloads, teaching patterns, casualised staff terms, and pensions. Locally and nationally, agreements are hard-fought wins with material effects for staff. But after two years without an industrial action mandate, employers are making us fight to maintain them.
12. Overall, this dispute is about: will we let employers get away with trying to solve sector financial problems by cutting our jobs, pay, and conditions? Or will we make them realise that’s not an option—they need to balance their budgets in other ways and lobby government hard, with the unions, for funding reform?
13. Our employer has gone on record saying they think the less money spent on staff, the better. Staff are treated as a ‘payroll problem’, not the people who make Durham what it is. The employer seizes opportunities to cut jobs, demand more work for the same pay, refuse promotion mechanisms for professional services staff and job security measures for research staff, and stall local pay spine review. They regularly cite external constraints like sector-wide issues to present their choices as inevitable. This national bargaining, with industrial action leverage, can create positive external constraints that will limit how much individual employers can cut jobs, pay, and conditions.
14. The issues we face nationally and locally can seem insurmountable. And we cannot promise we will win everything we want and need, locally and nationally. What we can say is that: if we fight, we may win. (Historically, when we have fought, we have won—not everything, but significant improvements.) If we do not fight, we will lose.

Act in solidarity with other unions, branches, and colleagues—don’t leave them in the lurch

15. This dispute concerns all campus trade unions in HE. Three unions are balloting at Durham; five unions are involved nationally. This hasn’t happened for decades. Joint union action will be so much more impactful than action by one union.
16. It’s important to all unions (and all staff, at all grades) that all unions pass the participation thresholds set in UK law. Let’s not let down our colleagues at Durham and across the sector.
17. Other unions’ reps at Durham are working hard to ensure they pass their ballot. Do you want to have to cross their picket lines if they’re successful and we’re not?
18. Do it for early career university workers. Cuts to pay, jobs, and conditions will affect early career academics and professional workers more than those closer to retirement. A real-terms pay cut this year reduces pay every year for the rest of our careers, which means it also reduces pensions. Reduced staffing and conditions will empower employers to cut further and make it harder to build to adequate staffing and conditions.
19. You can both vote and take industrial action, including striking, even if you are a migrant member. As a migrant, you have the same rights as your colleagues who are British citizens. Make the country you’ve chosen a better place for universities.
20. Outside of unions, many migrants don’t have the same democratic rights. Union votes are the only voting many migrant members get to do in the UK: let’s not let the anti-union ballot threshold disenfranchise those members.
21. Our branch has shown repeatedly that we can get strong turnouts in ballots and help other branches across the UK get across the 50% threshold in aggregated ballots like this. It’s time to do that again.

Make your union stronger, not weaker

22. A union’s strength is in collective action, determined by members through democratic channels. Voting (yes or no) is participating in these channels. Not voting is undermining them and weakening the union.
23. Any successful ballot strengthens the union, giving us options and leverage and showing our strength to employers. Any failed ballot weakens the union. We’ve been weaker since a UK-wide ballot fell short of the threshold in late 2023.
24. The 50% turnout threshold (a requirement only for industrial action ballots, not e.g. local/national governments) is an intentional anti-union measure designed to disenfranchise union members by invalidating democratic votes when ballot turnout falls short. Do you want to collude with that?
25. In a union you may not always agree with a vote to call a ballot. However, you still have a stake in making sure any ballot called does not fall short of the threshold. Whatever we decide through our democratic structures, we all need to unite around that to give us the best chance of success. This includes participating in ballots that are called democratically (however you vote) and uniting to make the most of whatever the democratic result of the ballot is.

This ballot gives us (and the other unions) options at Durham

26. There are many uncertainties in our sector and our university. Having a national industrial action mandate allows for national and potentially local action against whatever the employers throw at us in the next six months.
27. A national mandate also gives you and your branch more options and flexibility in negotiations on the local dispute and plans for balloting. (For more information on the local dispute on aspects of our job security, conditions, and pay that are negotiated locally, not nationally, log into Godric and read the notice linked from the homepage.)
28. The best scenario is if this ballot, and all the unions’ ballots, succeeds nationally. But even if the national ballot fails, we’re significantly better off the stronger our turnout is at Durham. This shows our strength to the employer, shows solidarity to the other unions who may be taking industrial action without us, and empowers us for local balloting.