The University and College Union is yet again balloting its members over industrial action – not over pensions this time, but rather over casualisation, workload, pay inequality, and… well, pay. Union members are said to be scratching their heads as they walk around campus in a daze (that’s just the standard academic habitus, mind you), wondering whether they hadn’t already done one of these about six months ago. And indeed they did – but only a small handful of institutions reached the magic 50% figure imposed by recent trade union legislation, so there really wasn’t much of a solid platform for industrial action. This time, after some ill-tempered shouting (or should that be well-reasoned debate?) at a national union conference, UCU has gone for an aggregated ballot, which means that all branches are lumped together and the 50% threshold must be reached across the board.
Opinion seems divided on whether this will succeed – on the one hand, the last, ill-fated ballot still achieved the highest turnout of any ballot over a national pay & conditions negotiation ever. On the other, there is nothing like the sense of unity and anger that surrounded the pensions dispute. Is this a case of people only voting when their own interests are at stake?