UCU pay ballot fails to meet threshold

To the surprise of almost no-one, the University and College Union’s ballot for industrial action on the 2025-26 New JNCHES pay round did not meet the statutory turnout threshold. Just 39.3 per cent of registered members voted during the six week ballot period, of these just under 70 per cent voted for industrial action.

At a cost of around £200,000 – funds that could have been used to support some of the many branches currently taking local action regarding redundancy plans and course closures – UCU’s Higher Education Committee now has a second data point in a series that includes the initial online consultation (32 per cent) that suggests members appetite for national action is limited.

General secretary Jo Grady admitted that “our immediate next steps must be to understand why more members did not engage with the ballot”. She committed to delivering a strategy, and to work with the HEC secretary to bring people together in the new year. The UCU Left bloc has argued that “the central problem is that many UCU members, including dedicated union reps, don’t believe that our leadership is willing to lead a serious fight”.

I also understand the parallel EIS-ULA ballot failed to reach the 50 per cent threshold. We have yet to hear on the ballots by Unite and Unison.

It is instructive at this point to look back at the meeting of HEC held on 1 September. The committee narrowly voted (20 votes to 19) to hold a short, six week, ballot with the intention of starting a six month mandate for action in early December (with a fair part of that period covering a point in the calendar where little or no teaching – and frankly not much other activity – was taking place).

At that meeting committee members heard that a short ballot would be unlikely to cross the 50 per cent turnout threshold, and that a ballot would potentially jeopardise local action, would be expensive, and that no plans to raise turnout from the 32 per cent achieved over the summer existed.

Beyond what was discussed it was also well understood that national industrial action on pay was unlikely to be effective given the financial plight of large parts of the sector. Previous UCU campaigns had accused universities as employers of building up “reserves” at the expense of staff pay, but given UCU’s parallel (and very welcome!) campaigning on university finance it was fairly clear that such a strategy was not going to work in 2025.

As I feel like I have mentioned a ridiculous number of times, the decision to ballot stalled long-overdue joint work on reforming the salary spine, diversity-driven pay gaps, workload, and contract types. This was work that had already begun, with the support of unions and employers, and that had at least an even chance of improving the terms and conditions under which many staff are employed. In failing to successfully ballot members, we can hope – at least – that this valuable work can continue.

The pay uplift of 1.4 per cent (and associated measures) was enacted on 1 August 2025 in some providers, and is due to be applied elsewhere by 1 July 2026 (at which point spine points 5 and 6 will be deleted).

Looking forward, the New JNCHES pay round for 2026-27 will kick off in the spring of next year. The promised UCU strategy would need to include measures that could drive up participation in ballots – even if the Employment Rights Bill removes the threshold and allows for e-balloting – if the possibility of meaningful industrial action is to have an influence in these and future negotiations.