BALLOT RESULT
Further education college lecturers have voted 4:1 to accept a pay settlement of 2.5% for the coming year. Far from moving lecturers towards pay parity with schoolteachers, who earn around 12% more for similar work, this settlement barely matches cost of living increases and will see college lecturers fall further behind schoolteachers. The settlement also leaves out in the cold over 40% of branches in colleges yet to implement the new pay scales agreed over two years ago. So billions can be found for war in Iraq and Afghanistan but workers vital for post-16 education will continue to be undervalued and underpaid.
UCU Left is not surprised at the ballot result given the failure of the ex-Natfhe leadership to mount any serious campaign against the appalling state of pay and conditions in colleges. There was no strike action after November of last year and a planned two-day strike in early May – a golden opportunity to raise the dispute’s profile - was undemocratically called off. There is a political lack of will over FE pay at the top of the union. Members have for years been treated as a stage army used to back negotiators with token strike action when necessary but never fully involved in ongoing action designed to put maximum pressure on our employers. The result is increasing workloads, redundancies, inadequate pay, high turnover and growing casualisation of the sector.
UCU Left intends to reverse this situation and will fight to build campaigns which can match this year’s HE pay campaign in its effectiveness and membership involvement and reverse the losses college lecturers have suffered over the last decade or more. UCU Left will locate that campaign within a strategy of the defence of post-16 education and the defence of Adult Education (see here) in the face of the government’s policies of privatisation and subservience to a big business agenda.
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Webmaster: Mark Campbell
Webmaster: Mark Campbell