Second round of college strikes in further education pay row

UCU members will be out in force on picket lines at Dearne Valley College, Doncaster College, The College of North West London and Rotherham College. This is the second time staff will have walked out on the colleges this year, following an earlier strike on Thursday 5 February.

All four colleges have categorically refused to honour a ground-breaking national pay deal, which was thrashed out in 2004. The deal should have a left a mid-ranking further education lecturer earning £4,511 more a year. The union has described the failure by those colleges still to honour the 2004 deal as one of the longest IOUs from management to staff in the history of industrial relations.

'Nobody involved with any of the colleges wants to see strikes and once we again ask the colleges to now sit down with us and discuss ways to resolve the issue'
Barry Lovejoy
UCU head of further education

Eleven institutions were originally targeted for industrial action, but seven have either reached agreement or are in meaningful talks.

UCU head of further education, Barry Lovejoy, said: 'The colleges only have themselves to blame for today's disruption. The staff are not greedy; they are merely asking for the money they should have been paid four years ago. It is the intransigence of the "IOU colleges" that has pushed members' patience too far and forced them into today's industrial action.

'I urge the management to enter in to meaningful talks with staff, as has been the case with some of other targeted colleges, where the threat of action has now been lifted. Nobody involved with any of the colleges wants to see strikes and once we again ask the colleges to now sit down with us and discuss ways to resolve the issue and avoid any further unnecessary disruption. Flexible agreements have been agreed at a host of other colleges with serious financial difficulties to implement the deal.'