If you are a UCU member of one of the five colleges in the Extended South West Region: City College Plymouth, City of Bristol College, Swindon New College, Truro & Penwith College and Weymouth College you are invited to an online rally, 12.30pm – 1.30pm on Friday 25 June, in support of UCU’s #RebuildFE campaign to address pay and funding in further education.
Please join Sean Vernell, and Jackie Darcy, vice chairs of the UCU further education committee (FEC) and members of UCU’s South West regional committee.
Please look out for invitations and instructions on how to join the Zoom meeting in your email inbox.
After consultation with branch members, letters have now gone to principals of five college in this region: City College Plymouth, City of Bristol College, Swindon New College, Truro and Penwith College and Weymouth College demanding a pay increase of greater than 5% and strikes at eleven colleges in England, including the five in the South West, are now on the cards.
Industrial action ballots opened on the 14 June for members of UCU. As a member of one of those five colleges, you will have had your ballot paper by now.
The dispute is over college bosses’ refusal to make a decent pay offer to staff. The pay gap between college and schoolteachers currently stands at £9,000 as staff working in further education have suffered real terms pay cuts of over 30% in the past decade.
After years of UCU’s joint campaigning with employers, further education (FE) won £400m of increased government funding, £224m of which arrived in August 2020 and could have been used for staff pay. However, employer body Association of Colleges (AoC) recommended a pay offer of just 1%.
Come to the meeting; stand with your colleagues, demand the pay increase you deserve after nearly fifteen months of worry and increased workloads; close the school-college pay gap at your college after more than a decade of below inflation FE pay increases.
Further information here https://www.ucu.org.uk/article/11616/Strike-ballots-open-today-at-colleges-across-England
FE colleges ‘Missing Millions’: see how much your college received. https://www.ucu.org.uk/missingmillions
Best wishes
Nick Varney
UCU Regional Official