Further education strikes in Scotland

The campaign of rolling strike action by EIS FELA – the Further Education section of the Scottish teachers’ union – entered its third week on 28 May.

EIS FELA members have not had a pay rise since 2021. The latest offer from the employers’ side, College Employers Scotland (CES), is a single pay rise of £5,000 for 2022, 2023 and 2024.

This amounts to a pay cut in real terms. It is also a lower pay rise than that received by other public sector workers in Scotland over the same period.

The current wave of strikes began at the end of February with a one-day Scotland-wide strike by union members. This was followed by six one-day strikes during March in individual colleges in the constituencies of the then First Minister, Deputy First Minister, Education Secretary and Minister for Further Education.

In April EIS FELA members staged strike action on different days in all Scottish FE colleges, leading into the current action of nine days of strikes in May and June by union members on the same days in all colleges.

The CES is taking a hard line. It has described its current offer as “full and final”, and one that will need to be funded through cuts to services and courses (i.e. a higher pay rise would result in even bigger cuts and job losses).

The CES has also announced that EIS FELA members who take part in the marking boycott scheduled for the end of the academic year will have 100% of their pay docked.

The Scottish Government has taken a back seat throughout the dispute. It has not condemned the plan to dock 100% of pay. It has not proposed to increase the funding of the FE sector in Scotland. In fact, with Swinney and Forbes now in charge, the direction of travel is in the opposite direction.

The dispute raises much broader issues than just rates of pay. It also intersects with government underfunding of the FE sector and plans to ‘reform’ the FE sector, by promoting closer ties between colleges and the private sector business and by imbuing the FE sector with a stronger ‘business ethos’.

Some FE colleges are already well advanced along that road and need no encouragement to continue to do so. Hence the recent strikes in individual colleges in opposition to cuts in courses, cuts in jobs, and increased workloads for lecturers.

Union branches should organise delegations to support local picket lines on strike days. But the EIS also needs to issue a call, backed by the STUC, for support, including financial support, from the trade union movement throughout Scotland.