Strike off at Askham Bryan College as last minute talks agreed

The college is yet to honour a ground-breaking national pay deal thrashed out in 2004. The deal should have a left a mid-ranking further education lecturer earning £4,511 more a year. The union has described the failure by those colleges still to pay up as one of the longest IOUs from management to staff in the history of industrial relations.

The union will be going ahead with planned strike action at five other 'IOU' colleges tomorrow. Members of UCU will be out in force on picket lines at Doncaster College, Rotherham College, Greenwich College, Suffolk New College, and Leeds College of Art.
 
UCU general secretary, Sally Hunt, said: 'We are pleased progress has been made at Askham Bryan College and we hope to now be able to resolve the issue. However, the college needs to be aware that we are prepared to take strike action, as we will be at five other colleges tomorrow.
 
'The staff are not greedy; they are merely asking for the money they should have been paid five years ago. It is the intransigence of the IOU colleges that pushed members' patience too far and forced them into the industrial action.'