UCU members at the University of Leeds, and across the country, have voted to strike over the outrageous attacks to our pensions which would see the ending of the defined-benefit scheme.

The UCU national executive committee and the local committee were recommending members vote for both strike action and action short of a strike (to be used in combination). The results are:

Strike action:
Yes: 87.0%
No: 13%

Industrial action short of a strike:
Yes: 92.1%
No: 7.9%

The turnout, 55.3%, was comfortably clear of the government’s new anti-strike threshold, which requires a 50% turnout while banning trade unions from using secure electronic voting or workplace balloting which would increase the turnout. (i.e. they suppress the turnout then outlaw strikes with low turnouts.)

UCU members in branches across the country have overwhelmingly voted to strike. See national website article

The UCU Higher Executive Committee is meeting today and it will decide on the next steps based on these results.

There are further talks – currently billed by the employers as final talks – to try to negotiate a solution tomorrow (Tuesday 23 January), after which we’ll expect a further update.

Thank you to everyone for participating in the ballot. It is good to have such a vibrant democracy when we’re making important decisions. Apologies on behalf of the committee if the reminders got annoying – reminding people significantly increases the turnout and we had to beat the government threshold so our votes would be counted.

Here are the detailed results of the ballot.