Update on England FE pay negotiations 2024-25

The joint unions met with the Association of Colleges (AoC) on Monday 20 May to begin pay negotiations for 2024/25 under the National Joint Forum (NJF). The second meeting was scheduled for Monday 10 June. The joint union claim can be found here.

At the first meeting discussions focussed on the headline pay claim of 10% or £3,000 whichever is greater, closing the pay gap with schools, a £30k starting salary for teachers in FE, and progress towards achieving binding national agreements. In response to the joint union claim the AoC indicated they were not in position to make a pay recommendation at this time as they wanted to wait to see the outcome of the School Teachers' Review Body (STRB). The reason given was the AoC do not want to recommend something that worsens the pay gap between FE and schools. The AoC wanted more time to seek further funding from the Westminster government. The joint unions expressed disappointment that the AoC delayed the pay recommendation until September last year and reminded the AoC that the sector had received £470 million additional funding last year, which we expect to be put into staff pay. The AoC indicated the additional funding, which wasn't ring fenced for pay, has already been used by employers and little is left over for staff pay. When pressed on when a pay recommendation was likely given it has effectively been rolled up with schoolteachers' pay. The AoC advised the second NJF on 10 June would be too soon, and a more realistic prospect was the end of July or September. The calling of the general election has further complicated matters. To move things forward, the joint unions pressed the AoC for a response on progressing talks regarding national bargaining. The AoC resisted engaging in even scoping what the talks could look like, this despite the claim setting out matters that can be discussed and the demand appearing in the joint claim last year. Again, another highly unsatisfactory response to the joint union claim. At the end of the meeting the joint unions insisted that as the AoC has effectively outsourced pay this year to the STRB, the 10 June meeting should focus on national bargaining and officials would meet beforehand to organise the meeting.

When the officials met last week, it quickly become clear that the AoC had lost interest in progressing these NJF talks. The general election and the confirmation that no pay offer would be made this side of the summer break in FE has led to a wide degree of disengagement on the employers' side. The unions insisted the meeting on 10 June go ahead and we scope out talks leading to a roadmap towards a new national level bargaining agreement. At the end of last week, the AoC informed the joint unions they could not field a team for the NJF on 10 June and as a result it did not take place. It will be rescheduled at some point, but at the time of writing this update that date is not known and we are soon to enter the end of teaching and the peak holiday period in FE.

Overall, this year's NJF round has been a hugely frustrating experience. No AoC recommendation on pay and no AoC commitment to talks on national bargaining reflect badly on the current functioning of the NJF. We desperately need change in FE and the union pay claim identifies they key things that need to change, from pay to workload to national bargaining.

UCU isn't waiting for the AoC. We want to work constructively with them at national level, but the union isn't standing still until that time. In FE we launched the New Deal for FE a few weeks ago. The New Deal is an ambitious strategy designed to reshape the sector and build UCU capacity at national and local level to win our aims of a new settlement for FE. To that end it has our fantastic FE branches at it centre.

You don't have to wait until the AoC gets round to making a pay recommendation, you can:

• use the template claim based on the national pay and workload demands and submit it to your employer
• contact your regional office for more information on the FE template claim
• engage your members in that and seek to meet management and get them to share the latest accounts
• proactively build activities around the petition on national bargaining, such as rallies and demos and if you organise a branch meeting invite the new chair of the UCU further education committee (FEC) and vice-president David Hunter to speak at it
• watch out also for invitations to regional and national briefings that David and I will be organising in the near further where your branch can come along and discuss the New Deal for FE and how we can best nationally coordinate what's going on at branch level and join up the campaigns.