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Become a departmental contact

Interested in getting more involved in the branch? Learn about the role of a departmental contact, and how to become one.

What is a departmental contact?

A local departmental contact is someone who is prepared to be the face of our union in their immediate work area and raise our union’s visibility in the workplace.

What do departmental contacts do?

Departmental contacts distribute SUCU literature among their colleagues, talk to their colleagues about what the union is doing, and feed back to the SUCU Committee about what’s happening locally.

Departmental contacts will also work with the Branch Administrator to keep local membership details up to date.

Examples of specific tasks departmental contacts do include:

  • Putting up UCU posters on their office door or in agreed places in their work area.
  • Distributing leaflets around their common rooms, leaving them on common areas like tables, distributing them around their colleagues’ offices.
  • Getting a list of members from their committee and passing on local branch messages to members.
  • Encouraging members to participate in local ballots, local elections and in UCU’s national ballots and elections.
  • Passing on UCU branch emails to all their colleagues, whether they are members or not, suggesting that they read them and encouraging them to join, especially using the online joining link.
  • Passing on important national UCU emails to their colleagues, encouraging them to read them and to consider joining.
  • Encouraging members to contact them if there are problems in your work area that the branch needs to know about.
  • Holding meetings in your immediate work areas to discuss local issues and feed back to your branch committee.
  • Identifying non-members in your immediate work area and talking to their reps or branch about the best way of recruiting them.

A departmental contact does not undertake casework or negotiation duties, unless you later want to receive training and support to become a full representative of the union.

Who is my departmental contact?

A full list of SUCU departmental contacts is available at:

Current SUCU departmental contacts

How do I become a departmental contact?

If you are interested in becoming a departmental contact, please email ucu@sheffield.ac.uk.

Resources for departmental contacts

If you are a current SUCU departmental contact, you can access some useful resources below:

Recruitment tips and materials:

Other resources: