Duncan Moore, UCU NEC representing FE workers, personal capacity
The Association of Colleges (AoC) has responded to the joint unions’ pay claim for further education (FE) workers.
Our pay claim was for 10% or £3,000, whichever is greater, as a first step to restore the more than 40% cut in real pay for FE staff over a decade.
The response from the AoC for the 2024-25 academic year comes well short. Its recommendation to college principals is a pay rise for FE teachers of 2.5% or £750, whichever is greater. This is half the percentage rise which school teachers were awarded this year!
Members will not get a say on this pay recommendation, as last month UCU’s FE Committee narrowly voted against a motion to hold a consultative ballot (see ‘College workers will fight for funding, but we need leadership’ at socialistparty.org.uk).
This would have given members a chance to have their say, and start to build for potential coordinated strike action if our demands are not met. It is clear that a section of the union leadership, including the president and vice president, are opposed in practice to taking any move forward towards a serious fightback of our members on pay.
The leadership’s approach in the ‘New Deal for FE’ campaign, of petitioning the government and the AoC in the hope they will give us more, is not working. Other unions are securing above-inflation (though still far from adequate) pay deals.
We need a serious fighting strategy to stop the decline of FE, and if those in our union’s leadership continue to oppose that, then they need to be replaced.
Socialist Party activists in the UCU will continue to argue for the members to be given the final say, whether by a consultative ballot or by a special FE sector conference.
Fighting candidates needed
With the NEC elections coming up next year, there is an opportunity for all those who want a campaigning and democratic leadership to collaborate to put forward candidates who stand on a fighting programme.
We want to discuss with all those forces on the left who want that, and will continue to campaign for the fighting, socialist policies needed to win for our members.
