EIS SEJ - FE Pay - The Next Steps

EIS SEJ - FE Pay - The Next Steps!

The October edition of the EIS – SEJ (link below) has an article entitled FE Pay – The Next Steps!

This article makes interesting reading and we are sure EIS FELA members and others might be thinking what the!

The article states …

“After 20 years the return to national bargaining in Scottish FE has finally been accomplished.”

Has it?  We ask this as the same article also states….

“Individual colleges may argue they cannot afford to pay what is agreed nationally. The government, college managements and unions have all accepted national bargaining. While some institutions have more funds than others it is still the responsibility of the management side to ensure that national agreements are operated. If this means providing additional funds from a central source, transferring funds, or rejigging the way colleges are funded to take account of a common pay rate across all of them, then this is a matter for the management side to sort out.

A second potential problem the union negotiators may confront arises from the overall level FE funding. This has been cut year on year. An ICM poll after the final pre - Referendum debate between Alex Salmond and Alistair Darling suggested the former performed better. However, one of the palpable hits made by Darling was to point out how thousands of college places have disappeared due to recent budget reductions. At the same time we have seen the massive pay-offs to departing senior managers. What is clear, then, is that when the will is there colleges can find the money.”

It will be of some concern that the “rejigging” that takes place in order to accommodate management’s responsibility to national bargaining might in fact be to further cut lecturer jobs and or terms and conditions.

It is also interesting to note that while stating….

“For College staff, and the EIS in particular, a primary motivation for national bargaining is equality and fairness. We hope the new arrangement can bring these concepts into all aspects of College life. But where should we start?”

If the primary motivation for national bargaining is equality and fairness then why are there such disparate sets of terms and conditions not only across the sector but in regionalised colleges?

Where FE should start is to ensure that the National Joint Negotiating Committee for College Staff does not get involved in single table bargaining!

They should also be looking to getting back to a national sector with national terms and conditions with equal pay surely being a corollary of this.

While the FE Sector has such outrageous discrepancies in management structures, job titles and remits and while lecturers perform essentially the same job in teaching they are doing it under widely different terms and conditions with the sector still involved in zero hours contracts.

We are really perplexed by the view expressed in the article in relation restoration of centralized control …

“Mergers, and the installation of a small number of what are, effectively, political appointees, went some way to redress the gap. Rationalisation of the wide differences between different colleges in terms of the treatment of staff is another step down the same road.”

What ‘gap redress’ has been made? The treatment of staff is still down to individual senior managements and managers and if we consider the negative outcome from a staff survey in the City of Glasgow College a short time ago and more recently the votes of no confidence in management at Kelvin College and the Anniesland Campus of Glasgow Clyde College then we would suggest that there has been no redress!

But this is “another step down the road”!

We recognize that It will be an extremely difficult challenge to reach the quality and fairness grail that is being touted here!

The current mess took the managers 20 years to create a sector that Griggs declared ‘unfit for purpose’ and like the banks we let them continue to run the sector in other roles or manage their exit with periods of garden leave and whopping payouts while the provision is savaged by cuts to jobs, programmes and local access to courses.

Consider what is currently being proposed in Glasgow!

National bargaining must be focused on equality of terms and conditions with salaries and indeed no detriment!

EIS SEJ October  Opens in New Tab/Window

Article - IS SEJ - FE Pay - The Next Steps   Opens in New Tab/ Window - pdf file!