Strikes at five further education colleges in pay row

Members of UCU will be out in force on picket lines at Doncaster College, Rotherham College, Greenwich College, Suffolk New College, and Leeds College of Art.
 
All five colleges have categorically refused to honour a ground-breaking national pay deal 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.

UCU general secretary, Sally Hunt, 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 five 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.
 
'Nobody involved with any of the colleges wants to see industrial action and unnecessary disruption. Flexible agreements have been agreed at a host of other colleges with serious financial difficulties to implement the deal, so there really is no excuse for these colleges to continue to refuse paying their staff fairly.'