Strike action scores a victory for Scottish college lecturers
Scottish lecturers have won a major victory in their battle for fair and equal pay and nationally recognised terms and conditions in the college sector. Up to 5,000 members of the EIS – Further Education Lecturers Association (FELA) took national strike action on March 17th and planned a further 30-plus days of strike action in the run-up to June.
But within hours of the hugely succesful first day of strike action, Colleges Scotland bosses had agreed to sign-up to a timetable to pay lecturers the same wage, regardless of which college they teach at and nationally agreed terms and conditions.
The three Glasgow FE colleges, whose managements were refusing to sign up to national pay bargaining have, in the aftermath of the strike, signed the National Recognition and Procedure Agreement (NRPA).
This victory for the college lecturers gives confidence to all workers, students and young people to fight back against the cuts. It also shows the strike action works and the potential power of nationally co-ordinated strike action by the trade unions which must be acted upon by the national union leaders across the public sector.
The 17th March strike received an overwhelming response from EIS-FELA members with large picket lines across the county and a demonstration outside the Scottish Parliament. The scale of the strike and the plan to escalate over the exam period, with the potential as well for a movement of college students and young people to develop in support of the action forced college management and the SNP government to resolve the dispute.
The EIS is now to ballot members of its Further Education Lecturers’ Association (FELA) on a new pay offer with a recommendation to members to accept. EIS-FELA President John Kelly said: “The offer sets out a timetable to establish national pay scales and a common set of terms and conditions for all teaching staff.
“This demonstrates what can be achieved by workers standing united and working collectively through their trade union to stand up for their rights.
EIS General Secretary Larry Flanagan added, “EIS-FELA members have achieved a major victory in the campaign for fair pay and equal pay in all colleges. Last week, colleges were issuing statements and writing to newspapers claiming that they could not afford to offer a better deal, and that the EIS pay claim was unrealistic.
“Now, after one day of co-ordinated strike action by college lecturers and one day of face-to-face negotiations, we have a greatly improved offer which addresses each of the priorities set by the EIS.”
College staff have had years of pay freezes and were threatened with an imposed 1% “pay deal” for this year. Lecturers in some parts of Scotland were being paid more than £12,000 a year less that others doing the same job in a different college. Now lecturers will, in a phased agreement be paid the same wage across Scotland. For some lectures it will mean a pay lift of 33%.
Cuts
Driving the anger of lecturers is also the increasing workloads and cuts to college funding that is turning the job of adequately teaching and supporting students into an impossibility. Cuts to contact time with students, the cramming of course delivery into fewer and fewer weeks and lack of time for support are all major issues.
FE colleges, currently run by management on a cost-cutting business model, play a vital role in training and eduation for hundreds of thousands of overwhelmingly working-class youg people in Scotland. The Scottish Government have continued to pass-on Tory funding cuts to public services in Scotland.
Between 2011 and 2014, cuts to college funding led to more than 150,000 fewer students at college in Scotland. Hours of learning were cut by almost 10 million while staff numbers have also dropped by 7,000.
Socialist Party Scotland and TUSC calls for MSPs and councillors to refuse to implement Tory cuts and set no-cuts budgets, building a mass campaign to fight for the money stolen in austerity by the Tories in Westminster.
