England wide strike action to hit 33 colleges in January over fight for fair pay

UCU members at all 33 colleges will strike on Wednesday 14, Thursday 15 and Friday 16 January, disrupting the start of spring term, if college bosses refuse to come back to the table with a fair pay offer.

The strike comes after an overwhelming 91% of staff across the 33 colleges who voted backed downing tools in a ballot with an aggregate turnout of 60%. A further 17 colleges were also balloted but have avoided strike action after UCU members voted to settle their disputes due to winning pay awards worth up to 8.7%.

UCU - alongside its sister unions NEU, GMB, UNISON and Unite - is calling for a New Deal for FE, including pay parity with schoolteachers, national workload agreements and a binding national bargaining framework.

Employer body, the Association of Colleges (AoC), has recommended a pay uplift of 4%, but colleges do not have to follow the AoC recommendation, and many have failed to do so in previous pay rounds. The average college teacher earns £9,000 less than their counterpart does in schools.

UCU general secretary Jo Grady said: 'College bosses are now on notice, if they refuse to come back to the negotiating table and make staff fair offers that help close the pay gap between school and college teachers then, come January, there will be huge disruption on campuses across England.

'Our demands are reasonable, and the 33 colleges facing action need to look at the 17 that worked to settle our disputes if they want to avoid action.

'It is also now high time employers worked with us to secure meaningful sectoral bargaining so we can end this disruptive year-on-year cycle of strike ballots and action.'

Colleges facing strike action:

1. Abingdon & Witney College
2. Barnet & Southgate College
3. Bournemouth and Poole College of FE
4. Bradford College
5. Brockenhurst College
6. Capital City College
7. Chesterfield College
8. City College Norwich
9. City of Bristol College
10. City of Liverpool College
11. City of Portsmouth College
12. City of Wolverhampton College
13. East Sussex College Group
14. Hugh Baird College
15. Isle of Wight College
16. Kirklees College
17. Lakes College West Cumbria
18. Lancaster and Morecambe College
19. Loughborough College Group
20. Morley College
21. Myerscough College (ballot closed on Tuesday 25 November)
22. New College Swindon
23. Runshaw College
24. SK College Group
25. South & City College
26. South Bank Colleges
27. Stanmore College
28. The Sheffield College
29. Truro & Penwith College
30. Windsor Forest Colleges Group
31. Wirral Met College
32. Working Men's College
33. York College