FE lecturers fight for pay deal

ON 25 May, lecturers at some further education colleges were on
strike, just to get the national pay agreement implemented in their
colleges. .

Bill Mullins interviewed Ben Bruges, NATFHE representative at
Southwark College, Rotherhithe campus, in south London:

"The college management is attempting to make us work even
longer hours as the price for implementing the national pay agreement.
We have an agreed ceiling of doing 23 hours teaching time a week,
which with preparation time means we already work in excess of 40
hours a week.

Now the management wants us to lift the ceiling and in effect to
take extra classes rather than increase the number of teachers, as the
numbers of pupils grow.

The chair of our governors, Margaret Morgan, is also the national
chair of the employer’s side. She negotiated the national pay deal
part two with our union and now wants to add conditions to it before
it is implemented in Southwark."

The pickets were handing out leaflets explaining how the lecturers
were fighting for the students as well as themselves. Many of the
students coming into the college were from overseas, particularly
Africa. For them a strike was something that was not allowed in their
own countries. "Some of them expressed fear for the lecturers as a
result of the strike," added Ben.

East Midlands

Pickets at the Derby Road site of West Notts College spoke to Jon
Dale:

"Staff here are really committed. We care deeply about the
students. It’s sad that we had to come out on strike."

"We have the lowest holidays of any college in the region. New
staff get just 30 days a year, but everybody varies in how much they
get.

"We teach hundreds of school students here, some of them have
been expelled from school and have emotional and behavioural
difficulties. But we get less pay than school teachers. Now management
are talking about sending us into schools to teach – still on less
money. They’ve no chance of us doing that!

"Some support staff have supported the strike today, even
though they’re not in a union and have lost a day’s pay. A dozen
lecturers have joined the union in the past week, since the ballot, so
that they could come out on strike."