Frontline college lecturers seeking pay rises of up to 25% to take their salaries above £40,000 are highly likely to take industrial action over a 1% pay offer, unions have warned.
Lecturers below management level have grown increasingly angry over national disparities that see some colleges pay nearly £7,000 less to staff doing the same job as those in other colleges, the Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS) has warned.
Unions want all unpromoted lecturers to earn up to £40,386, amounting to an uplift of between 3.3% and 25% across the best and worst-paying colleges.
They have already rejected a “risible” 1% unconsolidated offer – a one-year lump sum – and bosses have now offered a 1% consolidated deal, meaning the uplift would carry over into future years.
A 1% across-the-board rise would widen pay disparities as top earners would get £390 extra while lower-paid staff would get less, according to the EIS and the Further Education Lecturers’ Association (EIS-FELA).
Negotiators say colleges “can easily afford” the “tiny” sum of £18 million bosses say it would cost to meet their demands, insisting colleges have £214 million in accumulated surpluses and £99 million “salted away into secretive arms-length funds”.
The EIS say the next round of negotiations, the first within the new further education national bargaining framework, must seek to correct these pay imbalances rather than to worsen them.
EIS general secretary Larry Flanagan said: “Scotland’s college lecturers deserve a fair pay award.
“It is simply unacceptable for the management side to drag the pay round for almost a year, only to then offer exactly the same cash-terms percentage pay rise that was previously proposed and rejected.
“It is also extremely disappointing that the final offer reinforces the pay imbalance across the sector.
“The pay gap is already extremely wide, amounting to almost a £7,000 difference in some cases, for lecturers doing the same job in different colleges.
“This is not what Scotland’s FE lecturers hoped for or expected from a return to national bargaining, and the management across the sector must now rethink both their negotiation tactics and their unrealistic pay offer.
“The Scottish Government should also now take action to ensure a satisfactory outcome to this process.
“EIS-FELA members will discuss these issues at a special conference in Glasgow in two weeks.
“It is highly likely, given the current mood across the sector, that an overwhelming rejection of the management pay offer and a move towards a campaign of industrial action will be the most likely outcomes.”