UK teachers announce January strike

Staff and teachers at 32 English colleges are set to strike for three days in January. They’re fighting against poor working conditions and chronic low pay.

The workers are members of the University and College Union. They’ll be carrying out industrial action on Wednesday 14, Thursday 15, and Friday 16 January. Of course, this will disrupt the start of the spring term — unless college bosses come back to the negotiating table with a decent pay offer, that is.

‘Huge disruption on campuses’

An overwhelming 91 percent of staff from the 32 colleges voted in favour of the strike, with an aggregate turnout of 60 percent. On top of that, the UCU also balloted an extra 17 institutions, for a total of 49 overall. However, those 17 avoided strike action after members voted to settle – having won pay awards of up to 8.7 percent.

UCU general secretary Jo Grady stated:

College bosses are now on notice, if they refuse to come back to the negotiating table and make staff fair offers that help close the pay gap between school and college teachers then, come January, there will be huge disruption on campuses across England.

Our demands are reasonable, and the 32 colleges facing action need to look at the 17 that worked to settle our disputes if they want to avoid action.

It is also now high time employers worked with us to secure meaningful sectoral bargaining so we can end this disruptive year-on-year cycle of strike ballots and action.

The Association of Colleges (AoC) is the national employer body for colleges. It recommended a 4 percent pay uplift, but individual institutions are under no obligation to follow the AoC recommendation. And, sure enough, many have failed to do so in previous years.

‘I hope it doesn’t come to fruition’

David Hughes, chief executive of the AoC, said:

I hope it doesn’t come to fruition as it’s the students who will suffer. AoC and college leaders have shown over many years now how committed they are to improving pay and conditions, as far as their funding will allow.

We know, as do the unions, that any campaigning and action really needs to be directed nationally to secure commitments and investment from government to address the pay gap with schools and industry.

Fortunately, and as Hughes should know, the UCU is also directing its campaigning nationally.

According to the UCU, the average college teacher makes £9,000 less than the equivalent school teacher. As such, the union — along with the National Education Union, GMB, Unison and Unite — are demanding a New Deal for FE. That includes:

a 10% pay rise
parity with schoolteacher pay within 3 years
a minimum starting salary of £30,000
closing equality pay gaps
national agreements on workloads
putting FE at the heart of government plans.

FEWeek reported that the UCU strike will disrupt several key exams for students:

The move is likely to disrupt nearly two dozen Pearson BTEC exams as well as several WJEC level 1/2 technical awards that will be sat during the three strike days. AQA’s final applied general exams will take place on strike day 1.

However, if the colleges want to avoid the chaos, nothing is yet set in stone. The union has signalled that it’s still happy to negotiate, provided bosses can make a decent offer. Then, of course, we can begin to address the demands of the New Deal for FE.

Featured image via the Canary