LAST week, lecturers at West College Scotland (WCS) were on strike over pay as they face yet another real terms wage cut.
And yet again students studies were affected. To add insult to injury, colleges such as West College Scotland (WCS) have threatened staff engaging in legally allowed action short of strike, such as boycotts and work to rule, with pay deductions of up to 100% of their total wages.
In other words, lecturers face a withdrawal of salary even when working contracted hours entirely as normal.
When I challenged the Further Education minister Graeme Dey in the Scottish Parliament on this unacceptable situation, he merely indicated this was a choice for colleges and it wasn’t for him to intervene.
That simply doesn’t wash anymore. This is the ninth time in ten years college lecturers have had to commence industrial action.
There’ve been disputes around equal pay, conditions of service, transfer to permanent status for staff on insecure contracts, annual pay agreements, fire and rehire policies, and discipline and grievance procedures and policies since 2014 alone.
This not only suggests a breakdown in industrial relations but that the Scottish Government’s hands off approach has failed.
Of course, colleges will rightly note they face a huge black hole in their funding following years of real terms budget cuts.
Ministers will always point to “tough choices”, but this has far reaching consequences.
As Stuart Gorman, the EIS-FELA trade union secretary, put it: “How can you ever build the economy in Inverclyde and give people the skills they need without investing in the college? How can you give young people a chance to train without further education?”
This is a key point. The underfunding of Scotland’s colleges matters, not only due to the role these institutions play in working class communities but also their significance in shaping our economy.
For example, statistics published by the Scottish Funding Council show the number of students studying in the subject area of environment protection, energy, cleansing, and security has dropped 0.4% over the past decade.
The number of students studying in the subject area of manufacturing or production work has fallen in that time to a share of just 0.5%.
Ministers say they’re developing a Green Industrial Strategy to “maximise the benefits that Scotland’s abundant natural resources can deliver”, but the strategy in colleges appears non-existent.
Underinvestment now will lead to damaging costs in the long term. And a failure to intervene will lead to more strikes and continued disruption for students in the short term.
Our colleges are in crisis and it’s time the Scottish Government stepped up to the plate.
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