The UCU Left is a national organisation of University and College Union activists. It is committed to ensuring that the new union has a democratic structure through which members can determine policy, and elected officers and professional officials can be held accountable. It seeks to defend educational equality, and to oppose the consequences of neo-liberal marketisation. It is opposed to all forms of racism, sexism, oppression and imperialism.

FE Lecturers in Wales Strike to Defend Pay

Craig Lewis (UCU Wales FE)

UCU members in Welsh FE colleges have voted 72% in favour of strike action in their dispute over pay. This is a magnificent demonstration of the anger and concern members feel not only at the derisory 2.5% pay offer but at the employers’ attack on the new pay structure in Wales.

There is a vast amount at stake in the Welsh dispute. In line with English colleagues and other public sector workers the pay offer would mean a cut in living standards. However Welsh employers have gone further and attacked the new all Wales pay structure in the first year of its full implementation. This structure was phased in over the last four years and provides for pay parity in Wales between lecturers and school-teachers, a fair deal for part-timers and crucially the restoration of a common pay scale in all Welsh colleges.

Until this year the Welsh Assembly Government ring fenced funding for lecturers’ pay to ensure that all colleges implemented the different phases of the pay agreement. No college was allowed to draw pay funding from the Assembly unless it implemented each phase of the deal.

Following intense lobbying from the employers, who claimed that ring fenced funding undermined their autonomy, the Welsh Assembly Government ended the ring fencing arrangements in the run up to last year’s Assembly elections. This has given principals the opportunity to go on the offensive against a pay agreement they never wanted in the first place. The employers’ organisation, Fforwm, has told all colleges to block eligible lecturers from progressing to the top point of the scale this year as required by the agreement. They have also asserted that in future all progression on the upper scale will be dependant on individual college budgets. Effectively this tears up the national agreement and heralds a return to college by college pay bargaining.

The lessons for the union leadership in Wales are clear. We cannot simply rely on political lobbying. New Labour in Wales claims to be putting “clear red water” between Cardiff and Westminster but in practice they are not prepared to significantly challenge the free market principles that underpin FE delivery and college incorporation. That is why they capitulated to pressure from the employers.


All out on Wednesday 16th April

It is absolutely vital that the union in Wales pulls out all the stops to build for the strike and the lobby of the Welsh Assembly on Wednesday 16 April. We also need pickets on every college. A mass turn out will send a clear signal to both the employers and the politicians that UCU members in Wales intend to vigorously defend national pay scales and pay parity.

However a one day strike and lobby is unlikely to be enough to stop the employers. Rather than seek a negotiated solution, Fforwm has launched a vitriolic campaign against the UCU leadership in Wales, accusing them of lying and misleading members. This signals their intention to fight it out. UCU Wales FE Committee must implement the Wales Conference decision to escalate the action immediately. Future strikes should be co-ordinated with lecturers in England and with the NUT who will be striking later this month.
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