Our college, our community, our union

'Our college, our community, our union' is a broad campaign in defence of education.

• The campaign
• Help get a better deal for FE staff
• Get organised - build the union to get a better deal for FE
• Campaign in action
• Media coverage

LATEST

No more teaching on the cheap

A significant number of English FE colleges are still not paying the recommended pay to teaching staff because they haven't implemented the revised pay scales agreed in 2004 which reduced the pay gap between FE staff and schoolteachers.

UCU has been asking those colleges to bring their pay into line with others and pay the agreed rates for four years. Seventeen colleges have now been identified as target institutions for UCU. At these colleges, we are going to ask once again for the new pay scales to be implemented and, if the college still refuses, we will ballot for industrial action to get members what they are owed:  No more teaching on the cheap: college IOU leaflet (.pdf) [498kb]

2008-09 PAY OFFER FROM AoC

Members vote to accept pay offer: College lecturers vote to accept 3.2% pay offer

A special conference in September 2008 had agreed to recommend that members accept the 2008-9 AOC pay offer of 3.2% from 1 October 2008. The conference recognised that the offer did fall significantly behind the 6% claim and the current rate of inflation, but felt it was the best that could be achieved in the present circumstances: Special FE sector conference recommends members accept pay offer

Cuts to A level provision

UCU is very concerned about the marked increase in the number of A level courses being dropped by FE colleges. These developments not only threaten our members' jobs and pay, but they also threaten to erode their professional status and to destroy their public and community function: find out more about A level cuts

The campaign

The slogan 'our college, our community, our union' expresses the reality that further education is under pressure from a range of developments:

• a public policy context that emphasizes skills for business over community-based learning for all and which fails to allocate sufficient resources to fund professional pay levels
• marketisation, which threatens to turn education into a commodity and which throws colleges into destructive competition which each other and with private sector providers
• privatisation, whereby colleges are removed entirely from democratic control and stripped of their community function.

All of these developments threaten our members' jobs and pay, but they also threaten to erode their professional status and to destroy their public and community function - providing education for people of all backgrounds, all ages, all abilities and all communities.

That's why UCU has launched a broad campaign to defend education. 

'Our college, our community, our union' is a campaign that recognises that these pressures are interlinked and reinforce each other and that thereby enables us to campaign effectively on all these issues. The NUT has already signed up to this campaign and other sister unions in the education sector will be invited to join.

Help get a better deal for FE staff

Pay, rising workloads, increased stress, the threat of privatisation, course closures, overwhelming bureaucracy and cuts in funding for the needy are all significant issues for FE members. In this context what we are paid may just be one issue, but it is a mark of the respect we have from employers and government.

Why is it, then, that FE members in England:

1. teach school children, but earn less than school teachers
2. teach A-Levels, but earn less than sixth-form teachers
3. provide HE in FE, yet earn less than university staff?

UCU is seeking a better deal for FE staff which matches the rise in prices and the contribution members make to our colleges. To this end, UCU is now making preparations for an industrial action ballot of all FE members in England on the 2007 pay offer.

• Read more here

Get organised - build the union to get a better deal for FE

In order to build the union for our campaign we held a national recruitment week under the slogan 'Get organised', on 3-7 March.

• report on UCU's 'get organised' recruitment week

Support the campaign. Visit the activist campaigning resource centre for some ideas on how to get involved.

Campaign in action: how the campaign is unfolding

• Happy Christmas employers
  
  In just over two weeks before Christmas 2007, we collected thousands of signatures from hundreds of colleges across the country for our Scrooge card to the employers which was sent to the Association of Colleges. See College staff say 'no' to Scrooge employers' deal
• Joint education union rally
  
  UCU took part in a joint education union rally in December 2007. See video of UCU president Linda Newman speaking
• Students support campaign
  
  UCU receives a massive boost with the news that the National Union of Students (NUS) is supporting the 'our colleges, our communities' campaign:
  Four million learners join UCU campaign for a better deal
• 'Get organised' recruitment week
  
  UCU's 'get organised' recruitment week rolled out during 3-7 March.
• NUT agrees to join forces
  
  Unions join forces to get a better deal for education staff
  
  Download:  the joint UCU-NUT statement (.pdf) [75kb] and  the joint UCU-NUT campaign leaflet (.pdf) [105kb]
• Members strike
  
  College lecturers in England went on strike on Thursday 24 April in support of a demand to bring their pay up to that of schoolteachers: College lecturers walk out across England
  
  Many strike reports from across the country have come in. See also reports on the national and local media.
  
   Read Sally Hunt's speech to the London rally (.pdf) [63kb]
  
  A briefing was sent to MPs in affected areas:  read the briefing here (.pdf) [66kb]
• 4 June - lunchtime protests
  
  Pay talks were scheduled for 5 June. To put the employers under as much pressure as possible ahead of these discussions, branches organised joint union lunchtime protests on 4 June to demand a better deal: Pay protests: 4 June
• London members lead the way with further strike
  
  London members did the union proud on Monday 9 June as pickets turned out and members stayed away across the capital's colleges. This sent a clear message to college principals that FE members will not settle for low pay and will not go away: read the strike day reports
  

Media coverage

The dispute has gained a lot of media coverage across the country:

• see a quick listing here