UCU warns Doncaster College over swingeing job cuts

More than 600 jobs are at risk, which equates to over half of the workforce and the union is very concerned at the impact the cuts will have on teachers and the local community.
 
Doncaster has the fourth highest youth employment in the country and staff are afraid that the college's sixth restructure in five years will lead to students being 'turned away' from certain courses. In May Doncaster halted plans for over 150 job losses following the suspension of former principal Rowland Foote and UCU said it was disappointed that the college was pursuing the same cuts agenda again.
 
Doncaster College has already been disrupted by strike action this year when members of UCU walked out over a pay row. Doncaster is one of eight 'IOU' colleges being targeted by the union for failing to honour a pay deal agreed over four years ago (see IOU campaign in notes). Staff at the college took strike action in February and March.
 
UCU regional official for Doncaster, Julie Kelley, said: 'We will strongly resist any threat of compulsory redundancies and we urge the college to think again or face the likelihood of even more industrial action. The college simply cannot justify making hundreds of people redundant; it would be a disaster for students and the local area. We are already hearing that students will be turned away from some courses. We understand that the college is under financial pressures but this is not the way to deliver first class education in the area.'
 
UCU head of further education Barry Lovejoy said: 'Doncaster College stands to gain absolutely nothing by pushing ahead with these plans. The last that staff want is to take industrial action but these new proposals are simply unacceptable. The college needs to be able to offer students top quality teaching and a whole range of courses. Axing hundreds of people would make this impossible.'

Notes: IOU Campaign
 
The IOU campaign targets colleges that failed to implement a ground-breaking national pay deal, thrashed out in 2004, that should have a left a mid-ranking further education lecturer earning £4,511 more a year. The union has described the failure by colleges still to honour the agreement as one of the longest IOUs from management to staff in the history of industrial relations.
 
In 2003/2004, a two-year national agreement was drawn up that heralded pay parity for college lecturers with schoolteachers. Thousands of further education lecturers had been unable to reach the higher pay levels enjoyed by schoolteachers, 50% of whom get extra allowances worth between £2,364 and £11,557per annum on top of their basic earnings. The deal introduced shorter new scales that provided higher salaries for new lecturers and faster progression to the top points.