Scottish college workers’ national strike
Matt Dobson
Socialist Party Scotland gives full support to the national strike of college staff on February 29. Thousands of workers organised in Unison and EIS-FELA are taking action over jobs and pay.
College Employers Scotland and the SNP-Green government are asking college staff to trade pay for cuts to jobs and colleges as part of a devastating programme of cuts to public services which amounts to over £100 million for colleges and universities.
As well as a cuts programme, employers are waging war on the trade unions by threatening to withhold lecturers pay. EIS General Secretary Andrea Bradley said: “The actions of Scotland’s colleges are reprehensible, and are drawn straight from the anti-trade union playbook so beloved by hard right-wing regimes and enabled by the UK government’s regressive anti-trade union laws.
“Colleges are public sector employers, and the Scottish Government has repeatedly pledged that the UK government’s oppressive anti-trade union laws should never be deployed to bully and browbeat public sector employees in Scotland.
“The fact that Scotland’s college employers are now colluding to use anti-trade union laws to further inflame this long-running dispute, rather than working collectively to reach a fair solution, is a mark of shame for Scotland’s college sector employers and, by extension, the Scottish Government.”
Chris Greenshields, Unison Scotland’s further education branch secretary, said: “College support staff deserve a fair pay rise without the threat of compulsory redundancies.
“Nobody wants to be on strike, but staff have been left with little choice. The union submitted a revised proposal to try and move things along back in December and it took college bosses two months to reject it.”
This strike is part of the dispute that has been running for 18 months. Last December, college staff voted overwhelmingly in favour of strike action to continue their campaign for fair pay and to protect jobs.
The unions say College Employers Scotland must make an improved pay offer and guarantee there will no compulsory redundancies if they want to avoid further disruption.
In the last two years colleges have been closed by strikes by EIS-FELA and Unison. There was the long running bitter strike at Glasgow City College that stopped any more compulsory redundancies. Action short of a strike is being taken by EIS-FELA.
no cuts budgets
Full funding for education and public services could be won by the Scottish government setting a fighting no cuts budget and demanding the money stolen after 15 years of austerity back from Westminster. But the SNP and Greens prefer to implement and manage cuts and decline.
Socialist Party Scotland calls for the STUC/TUC to mobilise a national campaign of coordinated strike action for above inflation pay rises and against public sector cuts and any use of anti-trade union legislation. We also need a pro-trade union, working class political alternative to the main parties of cuts the Tories, SNP, Labour and the Greens.
A party that fights for workers We are fighting a for a new mass workers’ party based on the trade unions that fights on socialist policies. While the Tories are very likely to lose the general election, Labour under Keir Starmer will carry on where the Tories left off.
The Scottish Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition, which includes activists and reps from Unison and EIS will be standing candidates in the general election this year as a step towards this.
We also need to fight for a socialist society to end poverty, inequality, economic crisis and war. This means taking the major industries and the banks into public ownership under working-class control.
